Students in England taking the General Certificate of Secondary Education (GCSE), a testing process that has generated issues much like the USA's NCLB.
What's wrong with this picture?
I see a symbolic illustration of how an obsession with testing has changed not only how we measure what happens in schools but it is also a yardstick of what's really happening in schools. And what's happening is simply depressing to consider if you care about the future of schooling, as it is becoming, from my view, a testy situation--pun intended!
Sadly, the idea of taking a test is an innocent enough concept and, in fact, an important concept. A test does not have to be thought of as a pejorative word; it does not have to be thought of as a nasty four-letter word. In fact practically everyone wants tests---we want our airline pilots to have passed lots of tests, we expect our surgeons to have done well on all of their tests, our teachers need to be certified, we believe that medicines should be tested before they receive approval for distribution, we want to take a test-drive before we buy a new car, consumers want products tested before they buy them, when there's a health concern diagnostic tests can be lifesavers for humans and for our family pets, and then there's the white-gloves test to see if the house if ready for company.
In schools we have always had tests, some better than others, but despite a few bad experiences we have never thought of tests in quite the same way as we do today. A random review of blogs about testing found these very representative comments:
from a mom: "I think this whole test business is awful. I remember going on field trips and doing fun science lessons when I was in elementary school. I would not have the love of reading I have today if I had to take all those tests instead."
from a dad: "Too much testing and not enough learning. We need to come together and find a better way to make sure our kids are succeeding. Speak out!"
from a teacher: "Rather than holding teachers accountable for student progress and improvement over time, this legislation (a new teacher performance system in NY) dictates that students and teachers, out of an entire school year, will be judged by a few hours of a no.2 pencil scratching."
And Califonia Governor Brown recently delivered an interesting one-liner in the context of criticizing a piece of testing related legislation, "Adding more speedometers to a broken car won't turn it into a high-performance machine."
A fascinating piece from the Educational Testing Service in 1999, "Too Much Testing" is worth a visit, even though it was written over a dozen years ago. You can download the full report at ets.org.
It has clearly withstood the test of time!
