Tommy Boy is one of my favorite movie comedies. If you haven't seen it, I highly recommend it. It was on television the other night and I happened to catch the scene above and immediately thought of education. Why you ask? Well, my school just finished up state testing and I also had just finished reading an article in the NSASSP newsletter entitled High Stakes Tests Create Desperate Teachers and Principals. This got me thinking about testing in general, as well as the most recent testing results that I received where my school didn't perform as well as I would have liked.
Don't get me wrong, I am all for accountability and measuring student growth. Schools need to be able to validate student growth in their schools and should be held accountable to their communities. The part that I don't agree with is labeling schools in the hopes that it will cause immediate change. Schools are not created equal and have a variety of issues that may prevent them from drastically improving quickly. For example, is it a surprise to anyone that schools labeled as persistently underachieving are in high poverty areas and blue ribbon schools are typically in areas where family incomes are very high?
Earlier this year, I attended an Adolescent Literacy Conference with Dr. Kevin Feldman and he stated something that really resonated with me. His comment was, "If you value it, teach it." Such a simple statement packs a powerful punch when you actually break it down. The trouble with standardized tests for the purpose of ranking and labeling schools is that there is no value in it to students and educators. The only people that really seem to care about these rankings are policymakers. Most folks that I visit with want a well rounded education where their children are taught to think and grow in to positive and productive citizens. It is a rarity that I am justifying my school's ability to prepare students for college and career readiness based on state test results. The fact of the matter is that these assessments are poor indicators of how we are preparing our students for life beyond high school. Life outside of school is not about rote memorization and multiple choice tests. It is about critical thinking and problem solving (two things that are largely absent from these tests). I think a better approach would be to develop a project-based assessment where students are assessed on their critical thinking, collaboration, and communication skills would be a more effective method of determining what students have learned.
At the end of the day, I think Tommy Boy has it correct. I can run a school that teaches to the test and get excellent results so that I can get a "guaranteed" label, but I would prefer to turn out a student product this is high quality and knows a lot more than just being able to sit at a desk for 60-minutes in absolute silence and not collaborate with anyone. This, after all, is really how life outside of school looks like, right?
Posts
