“
Heartbreaking. Guilt-ridden. Frustrated.
Last week I stood in front of 27 young faces, who universally bemoaned needing to write the government-mandated Foundation Skills Assessments. I stood up, bit my lip and told them “everyone across the province needs to write the test, so just hunker down and do your best.” As soon as the words left my lips, I felt the guilt wash over me. I was asking them to write an assessment that I had no faith in, and worse yet, I didn’t believe they should write.
Like champions, my students ploughed through the pages of reading comprehension, writing and math exercises. I wanted desperately to guide each of them through their challenges, and give them the support they requested, but knew I could only clarify. Frustrated, I began ask myself…How was this benefitting them or the relationship I have been trying so hard to carve out with each of them? I immediately began to think back to the article I had read earlier in the week about another standardized test called “PISA” (Programme for International Student Assessment) that was being used by over 85 nations across the world. Could I be misguided in my disgust with standardized testing? Was I letting pride and personal pride get in the way of sound educational practice and data collection?
With more questions than answers, I decided to re-watch the PISA boss, Andreas Scheicher’s TED Talks video and tried to better understand why he felt that we should “Use Data to Build Better Schools” and how PISA fits into that equation.
Here’s a Coles’ Notes version of what he says:
Current Education System:
Better degrees don’t automatically translate into better skills, jobs or lives.
Too many unemployed university graduates and employers saying they cannot find the people with the skills they need
How PISA works:
Assesses how 15 year olds can use what they know in novel situations
His recommendations based on his most current data:
· Invest resources where they can make the greatest difference
· Place the best Principals in the toughest schools
· Most talented teachers into the most challenging classes
· Improve the quality of educators by:
o Carefully recruiting
o Providing effective teacher training
o Providing collaborative working environments
o Providing intelligent pathways for teachers to grow in their careers
It’s tough to argue with any of the recommendations for teachers, but how do standardized tests fit into this formula? With that in mind I again referred back to the original story I read.
The second educational expert who appeared along with Schleicher in the newspaper article was Yong Zhao, and I remember him saying in a recent interview that standardized testing is not good assessment. So I went to his website and found the following post that he wrote on PISA, and the fact that Shanghai may abandon PISA, despite the fact that according to data provided by the assessment, Shanghai is one of the top performers in the world.
In his posting Zhao reports that educational officials in the Chinese metropolis are considering opting out because the test results mask the fact that schools need to “follow sound educational principles, respect principles of students’ physical and psychological development, and lay a solid foundation for students’ lifelong development.”
Zhao criticizes PISA scores as focusing solely on test scores at the expense of other aspects of education, that are in his words “much more important.” His posting cites another method of assessment called the “green evaluation” that takes into account not only test scores, but also motivation, engagement, physical fitness and student-teacher relations. This “green evaluation” sounds like a much more logical and balanced way to assess a student's overall progress. (I will need to reserve judgement until I look at it a little more closely.)
This narrow focus on achieving elevated test scores to postulate improved academic performance has plagued the United States since the introduction of their “No Child Left Behind” policy. The program, which does exactly the opposite of what it claims, has not only stranded students in test-focussed purgatory, but is now leading some top educators across the United States to reconsider and sometimes abandon their roles in the public system.
While I don’t believe that our Canadian education system is perfect, I am thankful that Canadian educators are not faced with the “Drill ‘em and kill ‘em” (the words of Stacie Starr in the above news story) atmosphere facing our neighbours to the South. I agree with Zhao and I’m not an advocate for standardized testing. I believe there needs to be a more holistic, student-centered focus on educational assessment. Assessment should account for not only the academic, but also the social, physical, emotional, psychological and critical abilities of the student. As far as I’m aware the only way to assess all these aspects of a child is through a teacher and the relationship they build with that students, and there is no test that will ever replace that.
But Mr. Main, we haven’t done this in class before, I don’t know what to do .”Heartbreaking. Guilt-ridden. Frustrated.
Last week I stood in front of 27 young faces, who universally bemoaned needing to write the government-mandated Foundation Skills Assessments. I stood up, bit my lip and told them “everyone across the province needs to write the test, so just hunker down and do your best.” As soon as the words left my lips, I felt the guilt wash over me. I was asking them to write an assessment that I had no faith in, and worse yet, I didn’t believe they should write.
Like champions, my students ploughed through the pages of reading comprehension, writing and math exercises. I wanted desperately to guide each of them through their challenges, and give them the support they requested, but knew I could only clarify. Frustrated, I began ask myself…How was this benefitting them or the relationship I have been trying so hard to carve out with each of them? I immediately began to think back to the article I had read earlier in the week about another standardized test called “PISA” (Programme for International Student Assessment) that was being used by over 85 nations across the world. Could I be misguided in my disgust with standardized testing? Was I letting pride and personal pride get in the way of sound educational practice and data collection?
With more questions than answers, I decided to re-watch the PISA boss, Andreas Scheicher’s TED Talks video and tried to better understand why he felt that we should “Use Data to Build Better Schools” and how PISA fits into that equation.
Here’s a Coles’ Notes version of what he says:
Current Education System:
Better degrees don’t automatically translate into better skills, jobs or lives.
Too many unemployed university graduates and employers saying they cannot find the people with the skills they need
How PISA works:
Assesses how 15 year olds can use what they know in novel situations
His recommendations based on his most current data:
· Invest resources where they can make the greatest difference
· Place the best Principals in the toughest schools
· Most talented teachers into the most challenging classes
· Improve the quality of educators by:
o Carefully recruiting
o Providing effective teacher training
o Providing collaborative working environments
o Providing intelligent pathways for teachers to grow in their careers
It’s tough to argue with any of the recommendations for teachers, but how do standardized tests fit into this formula? With that in mind I again referred back to the original story I read.
The second educational expert who appeared along with Schleicher in the newspaper article was Yong Zhao, and I remember him saying in a recent interview that standardized testing is not good assessment. So I went to his website and found the following post that he wrote on PISA, and the fact that Shanghai may abandon PISA, despite the fact that according to data provided by the assessment, Shanghai is one of the top performers in the world.
In his posting Zhao reports that educational officials in the Chinese metropolis are considering opting out because the test results mask the fact that schools need to “follow sound educational principles, respect principles of students’ physical and psychological development, and lay a solid foundation for students’ lifelong development.”
Zhao criticizes PISA scores as focusing solely on test scores at the expense of other aspects of education, that are in his words “much more important.” His posting cites another method of assessment called the “green evaluation” that takes into account not only test scores, but also motivation, engagement, physical fitness and student-teacher relations. This “green evaluation” sounds like a much more logical and balanced way to assess a student's overall progress. (I will need to reserve judgement until I look at it a little more closely.)
This narrow focus on achieving elevated test scores to postulate improved academic performance has plagued the United States since the introduction of their “No Child Left Behind” policy. The program, which does exactly the opposite of what it claims, has not only stranded students in test-focussed purgatory, but is now leading some top educators across the United States to reconsider and sometimes abandon their roles in the public system.
While I don’t believe that our Canadian education system is perfect, I am thankful that Canadian educators are not faced with the “Drill ‘em and kill ‘em” (the words of Stacie Starr in the above news story) atmosphere facing our neighbours to the South. I agree with Zhao and I’m not an advocate for standardized testing. I believe there needs to be a more holistic, student-centered focus on educational assessment. Assessment should account for not only the academic, but also the social, physical, emotional, psychological and critical abilities of the student. As far as I’m aware the only way to assess all these aspects of a child is through a teacher and the relationship they build with that students, and there is no test that will ever replace that.