On standardized testing

I started writing a reflection for one of my classes and it turned into an off-topic gripe-fest about standardized testing only worthy of publishing to blogs dedicated to improving the world such as this.  Enjoy!

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In my graduate studies, my Introduction to Curriculum class once came to the conclusion that standardization in schools is not inherently evil.  The key question to ask when confronted with standardization is “standardization of what?”  Are you standardizing the process of education?  I.e. pedagogies and practices. (the means) Or are you standardizing the outcomes?  I.e. evaluation and the desired understandings and skills of students. (the ends)

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Standardizing evaluations and outcomes can create many problems, as demonstrated by researchers of standardized testing.  Standardized tests like the EQAO and AYP have the potential to create systems of schooling that---instead of improving students' overall understanding, skills, and allowing them to realize their full potential---actually just increase students’ ability to score well on standardized tests.

Standardized evaluations can create systemic problems such as polarizing the efficacy of schools.  For example, magnet schools that do well at reaching standardized outcomes tend to attract the best teachers meanwhile schools that are barely surviving under scrutiny based on standardized test results tend to ward off good teachers.  This relationship creates a positive feedback loop in which the better a school does on the tests the more it attracts good teachers and funding (which allows the school to do even better on the tests); the worse a failing school does on the tests the more it wards off good teachers and suffers reduced budgets (which cripples the school at the expense of the students who end up doing even worse on the tests).  This exponentially increasing gap between the best and worst schools is very real in certain parts of the United States.

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However, standardizing outcomes, but especially standardization the evaluation of outcomes, can help organize and increase the efficiency and effectiveness of educative systems (pending those educative systems actually use the data collected by standardized evaluation).  Ideally, if you have a sufficient effective measure of outcomes, it's possible to compare school environments, demographics, students' socioeconomic statuses, etc. with schools' capacity to achieve learning outcomes.

Standardizing evaluations of outcomes provides benchmarks.  They can act as a ruler to measure the relative efficacy of schools and their educative potential.  Further, standardization of evaluations of outcomes encourages teachers to organize their lessons around learning outcomes.  It forces teachers into backward designing their lessons: identifying outcomes and developing teaching practices and activities which create the educational experiences necessary to achieve those outcomes.

Whereas standardizing outcomes can be justified, standardizing pedagogy and practices almost always creates more problems than it solves.  Every student learns at different times in different ways.  Given the diversity of learners, there’s a strong justification for differentiated instruction. 

There's something enormously dehumanizing about homogenizing teaching practices and pedagogies.  It denies the individuality, diversity, exceptionality, and the potential vitality and vibrancy of the human condition.  This goes for students AND teachers.  Teachers are just as diverse as students, and to constrict teaching practice and philosophy is to try to take the human beings out of teaching and learning.  You kill style, attitude, and enthusiasm.  Teacher-directed teaching can be just as important as student-directed learning.

All that to say, it's in everyone's interest that we constantly renegotiate the qualities, understandings, and skills that belong to an ideal global citizen.  Therefore, it's also in everyone's interest that we constantly renegotiate the methods and philosophies that should be employed when educating such citizens.