Marion Brady column, August_4_2005

[Peter Farruggio <pfarr@cal.berkeley.edu>]

Published in the Orlando Sentinel

> From: Marion Brady <mbrady22@CFL.RR.COM>
>
> "We are heavily reliant on standardized testing . . ." says Bill Hiss, 
> talking about education in America. Hiss is Vice President of Bates 
> College in Maine.
> "What we have learned at Bates, " he argues, "is that this may be a 
> monumental trip up a blind alley."
>
> As you can guess if you've read even a few of my columns, that "blind 
> alley" comment about standardized testing got my attention. Like just 
> about every educator who's spent years in the classroom and given thought 
> to what was going on in students' heads, I oppose high-stakes standardized 
> tests. They confuse cultural differences and ignorance, aren't keyed to 
> real-world or adult success, lend themselves to political game-playing, 
> cost enormous amounts of money, short-change non-tested fields of study, 
> deaden or penalize creativity, hand local control of education over to 
> faceless corporate interests, undercut teacher professionalism, divert 
> attention from myriad non-educational factors affecting school 
> performance, and are crude measures of even simple abilities.
>
> (Incidentally, reading isn't a "simple ability.")
>
> Hiss was speaking on National Public Radio's "All Things Considered." Just 
> to be sure I'd heard him right, I went into NPR's archives and replayed 
> his comments several times.
>
> Whether or not you agree with his "blind alley" view, there's no question 
> about our growing reliance on standardized tests. DIBELS, DRP, FCAT, HSCT, 
> PSAT, SAT, NAEP, ACT, ITBS, CAT, TASK, and CTBS are some of those with 
> which many students are familiar. Your kid or grandkid probably won't be 
> required to take every one of them, but the consequences of their scores 
> on the ones they do take will almost certainly follow them for the rest of 
> their lives, opening some doors, slamming others shut.
>
> The major standardized test to which Hiss was referring was the SAT - the 
> Scholastic Aptitude Test. For the college-bound student, this is a big 
> one. It's a creature of the College Board, an association formed in 1900 
> made up of more than 4,700 schools, colleges, universities and other 
> educational organizations. As standardized tests go, it enjoys 
> considerably more prestige than the more recent ones, such as FCAT, which 
> states are required to buy or build to comply with No Child Left Behind 
> mandates.
>
> Notwithstanding the major role SAT scores play in most colleges' selection 
> procedures, Bates leaves it up to students to decide whether or not to 
> disclose their test scores. Hiss says the policy has been in place for 
> twenty years, and that, in those years, about a third of applicants have 
> kept their scores to themselves.
>
> Bates has kept a running record of student performance. What they've 
> learned from their "Don't ask, don't tell" policy is that there hasn't 
> been a dime's worth of difference between the grade point averages or the 
> graduation rates of those who did and those who didn't disclose their SAT 
> scores. Hiss mentioned one girl who for some reason did submit her 
> way-below-average score of 400 on the verbal section of the SAT, but 
> graduated magna cum laud and went on to get a medical degree from Brown 
> University, one of the most respected schools in the country.
>
> But, he continued, Bates doesn't just suffer no ill effects from ignoring 
> standardized test scores. The college enjoys a more diverse and therefore 
> more interesting student body.
>
> If standardized test scores have little or no predictive power for college 
> performance, you can bet they have even less predictive power for 
> performance in life. Why, then, are we so willing to use them to beat up 
> on kids, teachers, and schools, and let life-changing decisions hinge on them?
>
> I really don't know. I guess it's a cultural thing. Standardized tests 
> produce numbers, and as a people we often seem more interested in 
> comparing numbers than in figuring out what, if anything, the numbers mean.
>
> I'm not against all testing. Here's one I'd favor: Fairtest, the National 
> Center For Fair and Open Testing, identifies 48 professional education 
> organizations with policies opposed to the present high-stakes 
> standardized test fad. Before editorial writers, columnists, newscasters, 
> television producers and other opinion makers are allowed to toss off test 
> scores as if they actually meant something important, I think they ought 
> to have to make at least a "C" on a test proving they'd read and 
> understood the objections of the professionals in the field.