Oh assessments...

Assessments are my life right now. As much as I may hate it, I teach to the test. Specifically, I teach to the GED, since that's why my students attend the program.

But just because students pass the GED doesn't necessarily mean they will be successful in post-secondary education, or, for that matter, in life. The same applies to all standardized tests. Life isn't standardized, so why should students' assessments be?

At its best, education should prepare students for life, which standardized tests do not do. Therefore, the standardization movement is unethical, since it does not accurately prepare students for real-world skills. I also think the movement is dangerous, since our society depends upon a well-educated populace with critical thinking and problem-solving skills. The standardization movement is essentially destroying our own future (not to be overly dramatic or anything). This will continue to be the case for as long as the movement is run by billionaires, for-profit testing corporations, and other people who are not teachers.

In the article linked above, a mother is concerned that Pearson's wrong answer in a textbook would carry over to Pearson's test; but more than that, she is concerned that the test is not allowing her children (or herself) the chance to hold them accountable. As the author states, Pearson is writing tests "we parents will never get to see. Tests we parents will never get to review. Tests we parents will never get to question." This is extraordinarily unethical, and extraordinarily dangerous. Any curriculum designer will tell you to BEGIN with the assessment to see what students know, not END with the assessment to penalize students for what they don't. (Of course, you need pre- and post-assessments to be entirely accurate, but the point of the final one is to see which skills students still have not mastered, not to be used as the end-all be-all of how to grade students and their teachers.) If the testing company is the only one that knows the answer, how can students, parents, and teachers know how to improve? (Moreover, if teachers have to be held accountable, why doesn't the testing industry have to live up to its own standards?)

I experience this same frustration with my students. We give them practice tests through the testing sites, and we are able to see a score, and nothing more, once the student has finished. That's it. This is incredibly unhelpful in terms of designing lessons and assessing skills. This is not how you learn. This is not how you teach.

Clearly, I am not a fan of the for-profit testing industry. Nor, as I'm sure you're aware, am I a fan of the larger movement in which billionaires seem to have ultimate control over education reform, regardless of how ignorant they are of the complexities of the school system. (Warning: This article is really long.) They continually harp upon accountability, but to whom are they accountable?

The current education reform movement, in a nutshell, seems to be saying that if you have money and power, you get to make the rules, and that teaching really isn't that hard, since they can get the answers (albeit wrong ones) from the textbooks. The entire movement undermines the entire profession of teaching, what with all this hate about teacher tenure and Teach for America, which doesn't seem to think that one needs experience or much training to become a teacher. That's why I'm glad that Harvard  may no longer be sending graduates to TFA -- at least that is one baby step in the right direction. But we have so far to go.