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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region Forumswhy is teaching to the test demonized when so many kids aren't meeting grade level in reading...
writing or math?
Does it really matter how a teacher or school get kids to grade level?
Geoffrey Canada gets nothing but praise for the success of his students in Harlem Children's Zone meeting grade level in reading, writing, and math.
Why should we care if a teacher has the same success by teaching to the test?
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JI7
(89,252 posts)
obamanut2012
(26,081 posts)Posteritatis
(18,807 posts)Egalitarian Thug
(12,448 posts)only how, but to want to think.
Merely training a kid to regurgitate can make a spreadsheet analysis look good, but it doesn't engage the kids. It doesn't spark their curiosity or expand their interests, it's just a grind that they are forced to endure until they're old enough to never want to learn anything again. It's how you make republicans.
1-Old-Man
(2,667 posts)When schools train instead of educate its a pretty clear indication that the parents of students attending those schools were never taught the difference between training and education. If those parents knew the difference they would not stand for their children's lack of education.
Egalitarian Thug
(12,448 posts)now a pejorative. As in; were you so inept/incompetent/unambitious that you can't do anything but be a teacher?
What really kills e is that we absolutely know exactly how to run the best schools in the world, we have the models and examples right here. Schools that we never see the inside of and will never be allowed to attend, because that where the ruling class is taught.
smaug
(230 posts)What the 1%ers and their lackeys in the US Dept of Education (Arne Duncan is guilty, but has a host of enablers) want is training, not education. I've been a gadfly on the lack of humanities and social sciences in the Common Core state standards being inflicted on our children. Oh, there's a nod to the elements which make us human in the CCSS 'literacy' guidelines, but those are grafted on afterthoughts.
Remember, the 1%ers do not want critical thinkers at all; merely drudges who spent their 'leisure' time sitting in front of their flat panel televisions and regurgitating Big Corporate Media talking points, watching 'reality' shows, and complaining about 'libruls' who want to impose universal health care, dignity in the workplace and perhaps, you know, clean air to breathe and clean water to drink? </sarcasm>
Education means humanity. Training is the goal of the billionaire club "education reformers" and their bedazzled boot licking servants in the media and (unfortunately) our educational administrators. I look heavily askance at any "educator" who has not spend a great deal of their career in the classroom, and non-teachers have no business whatsoever in trying to lead a school or a school system. As Admiral Hopper tells us, "You manage things. You lead people."
Training is for horses and dogs. Not humans.
Egalitarian Thug
(12,448 posts)mules that they can work to death and discard. The fact that we have not been rioting and burning our cities down for the last decade or so indicates just how passive and scared we are. Unlike Americans in the past, we are willing to put up with anything so long as they tel us that it will all be OK in some imagined future.
NNguyenMD
(1,259 posts)My colleagues who were schooled in developed areas of India, Pakistan, Japan and even Iran tell me that promotion in school revolves around end of the year exams.
The US ends up handing out many H1B visas to students from these countries, I assume because they have qualified education and expertise that are lacking in the US.
If teaching toward the test is what helps make the grade in countries where we are actively importing professionals, why wouldn't that work here?
Mariana
(14,858 posts)to ensure that adequate time and work is put into teaching the material that's going to be on the test. If that's all that went on, it wouldn't be so bad.
What goes on in the US, in some places at least, is that much of the school year is spent in test prep mode - being drilled over and over and over again on very specific types of problems, and taking practice test after practice test. No new material is being learned while this is going on. There may be the threat of being sent to "intervention" if they screw up even one of these, for any reason. The kids who didn't get it before the drill don't get it any better after the drill. The kids who've mastered the material are bored out of their skulls.
This is how far it has gone in one district that I know of:
My stepkid's middle school did weekly drills, for months, where they just practiced filling in bubbles. You know, because the kids might accidentally fill in the wrong bubble on the test, and it would be marked wrong, so they had to practice filling in the right bubbles, week after week, for months. How mind-numbing is that? And how insulting to them! These weren't little kids who were going to be taking a test for the first time, they had years of testing behind them. How are students supposed to take school seriously when they're made to spend their time there in such a way?
I have the feeling that crap wouldn't fly in the schools you're talking about.
jp11
(2,104 posts)time came around it meant we stopped learning, stopped having 'fun', stopped feeling engaged, and at least for me had to essentially jump through hoops.
When my HS was threatened with a takeover by the state for low test scores on whatever the test of the day was ALL students were forced to spend 2+ weeks or so after school doing BS test prep regardless of how well we did on them. That was nearly 20 years ago and I still recall being forced to sit after school and do the stupidest test prep crap I think I ever had to deal with.
For every stupid test prep session I ever had I was almost always bored out of my mind.
The only thing I liked was the reading comprehension passages we were given in grade school some were actually interesting(too short) but then my intelligence would be mocked by asking me the stupidest things about what I just read. For some I'm sure the tactics taught about how to jump through the hoop helped them avoid actually gaining any skill at reading comprehension.
left is right
(1,665 posts)in her 4rh grade year, she was taking the state-mandated tests. Her teacher walked through the room encouraging the kids and helping some to get back on track and noticed that my daughter was drawing flowers by filling in the bubbles
coalition_unwilling
(14,180 posts)way more important than any stupid test.)
That is a really cute anecdote too, btw. I'm going to share with my artist wife when she wakes up 
hunter
(38,318 posts)It's often more like teaching a horse to count...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clever_Hans
Fresh_Start
(11,330 posts)you have an inordinate focus on a specific test result while failing to a) challenge the best students and b) excite the majority of students about the joy of learning and c) recognize that there are other areas like art, music, science, problem solving, technology which are bypassed entirely in an attempt to skew resources to "The Test"
nopedontlikeitatall
(44 posts)If it is lets put your question another way....
Would you go to a Doctor who was only taught the test in collage and the Licensing Exam/Boards in Medical School?
Would a Doctor who was only taught to the test through all the years of education they receive be a Doctor even be worth going to?
NNguyenMD
(1,259 posts)comes down to studying for tests. I agree that how well you do on a test does not determine how effective or compassionate a physician you are.
But let me pose this question to you, would you go to a doctor who repeated several years of medical school because they failed their exams and courses multiple times?
Le Taz Hot
(22,271 posts)on whichever cognitive rigor scale you consult. The most common are Bloom's Taxonomy and, more recently, Norman Webb's "Depth of Knowledge."
Level 1 is basically regurgitation of facts. Memorization is not learning, it's memorization and it's what makes school work deadly boring for most students.
In contrast, the highest level, Level 5 in Bloom's and Level 4 in DOK, requires the student to synthesize, judge, evaluate and basically, make something where nothing existed before. For example: If I were teaching a 3rd grade class, I might put up 10 random words on the blackboard and instruct students to write a story based upon those 10 words. The students start out with 10 random, unconnected words and CREATE a story where none existed before. THAT is Level 4/5 whereas if I were to have written a story on the board and required students to memorize every word, that would be a Level 1. The students have "learned" nothing except how to regurgitate a series of words in the correct order. THAT is why "teaching" to the test is so abhorrent to most educators.
Carolina
(6,960 posts)so am I. Therefore, I have one question for you. Were you taught solely for the many tests you have had to take along the way? Or were you taught so that that you would learn and could apply that knowledge in different situations?
There is a huge difference and it starts early. Teaching to test, as one poster so aptly said, is training. In the old days of reading, writing and arithmetic (thank you Big Dawg, Bill), children were taught in a way that was not only successful but also inspired life long learning and did not have kids stressed and burned out by the time they reached middle school.
Geoffrey Canada's success is likely due to many other factors including the environment of learning.
NNguyenMD
(1,259 posts)demonstrate critical thinking.
As a former clinical instructor of interns and medical students at the medical college I worked for previously, there are two ways you are expected to study. One is to study for your exams with board review material, the second is to read about the patients and their disease processes.
I don't think one is necessarily exclusive of the other. Medical students and young physicians are expected to express intellectual curiosity and independently look up answers to their clinical questions. That quality is enhanced when they have a strong foundation in the fundamental knowledge they are expected to master for their licensing and board exams. At least in medical education, I would equate telling them what they need to know for their exams to teaching them to the test. We all know that the test knowledge we study often does not exactly mimic real life clinical scenarios, but it sets up the path of knowledge one needs to get started in diagnosing or treating a patient.
I have never been a public school teacher, I don't have children, I am early in my professional career. As someone who votes but is not in the trenches of public education, setting national standards for education via test taking, and tying funding to school performance does not sound like a terrible idea from afar. That probably sounds like the right wing platform on this board, but as someone who is on the outside looking in, I haven't heard very good arguments from the other side. Hence, education reformers like Cory Booker and Geoffrey Canada appeal to folks like me quite a bit.
a la izquierda
(11,795 posts)Besides what's on the test. My 6th grade nephew didn't learn about tge 13 colonies in all his previous years of schooling.
Second, I took annual tests as a kid, but they weren't the end-all-be-all. And a bunch of us who graduated went on to become successful (I myself have a PhD).
Bonobo
(29,257 posts)At the point at which Asians started kicking American ass in tests, someone came up with a great way that Americans could mollify themselves and demonize Asians at the same time.
It goes like this, roughly speaking: Asia is a kind of ant colony of drones. They don't have any individual creativity and they are just taught to memorize things. So although US education is abysmal, although 50% of people believe in Creationism and although 90% can't find the countries on a globe that the US is bombing, they are at LEAST still individuals as compared to THOSE Asians.
It's a modified form of the Wild West mythos of Americans living free on the prairie or something. But it isn't reality. It is a story designed to make yourselves feel better.
coalition_unwilling
(14,180 posts)between Asian-American measures, both academically and economically, against pedagogical practice.
I am pretty sure your words would be borne out by such analysis, that testing became the panacea when Asians started out-performing us economically and academically.
BTW, I read somewhere that 70% of Americans believe angels actually exist. I don't know what that says about teaching methods
Lydia Leftcoast
(48,217 posts)For one thing, they have music and art and crafts, yes?
Bonobo
(29,257 posts)I have a child in 3rd grade elementary Japanese public school, 3rd grade middle school and 3rd grade high school.
Yes, they do a tremendous amount of work, MUCH more homework and school days than America.
Yes, they learn alot more. It is incredible how much they learn.
And yes, they have art, they have music, they take field trips, all that good stuff.
I do not believe the tripe about how it limits their creativity. I have been a father working out of the house for 18 years. You can't get any closer to it than I have been.
If there is less robust egocentricity in Japan (and there is!) then it is due to the culture as a whole.
porphyrian
(18,530 posts)It ONLY covers reading and math. Because funding for schools is tied to FCAT scores, public schools are now only teaching reading and math, for the most part; other classes are being cut entirely. For example, kids in Florida no longer learn civics or geography, unless they have a rare exceptional teacher who adds back in the additional material. Seriously, Florida is producing generations of functionally impaired students. Who started this mess and then lied about its success? Jeb Bush.
TBF
(32,068 posts)they are so busy teaching some random test that aren't busy teaching our kids to read, write, add, subtract.
In Texas alone those tests have added over $1.2B (yes BILLION) to the profits of Pearson LLC.
http://www.kxan.com//dpp/news/investigations/staars-price-tag-90-million-this-year
Here is my post on that in the Education Group - http://www.democraticunderground.com/11242283#post5
L0oniX
(31,493 posts)
patrice
(47,992 posts)the authentically creative questions come from, as differentiated from the questions that result simply from repetition.
Starry Messenger
(32,342 posts)Not unless politicians have a massive change of philosophy and decide to pour 10's of millions of dollars into each school and the surrounding community. Because that is what happens at HCZ--only the bulk of it is is private philanthropy, not public $.
DonRedwood
(4,359 posts)Weeks of lost education time practicing for and taking tests...Every couple of years they lose a month all added up, then another month, then another month.
And for what? so the teacher can be judged by how well they took the test.
A kid can be home schooled for the first couple of years and then enter school with major deficits and no skills. That year's teacher fails because this one kid pulls all her scored down. All the special ed kids, EVEN KIDS in medical programs with not much more than a funtioning brain stem also take the test. The special ed teacher has to read a modified version to them and allow them 3 minutes to answer, then read the next question. Hundreds of questions and hours and hours of time. Only the teacher is allowed to give them. And for what? The special ed room scores are added to the general population scores so the entire school fails. What does this do? Makes schools hate special ed and it has pushed them out as much as possible. And the kids in the special ed rooms lose there teacher for WEEKS as he or she reads the tests, one after another to all their kids one-on-one.
My last year in elem ed it took me two full weeks to give all my tests. My students watched movies and colored while I did it.
These tests are not about judging what kids can do, its about setting up a system where the teachers and schools almost all fail so the right wing can pick apart public ed, the teacher's union, and privatize the whole thing.
ldf
(2,964 posts)most kids can memorize anything. but it doesn't mean they understand it.
their world will be full of things and situations that weren't even mentioned in passing, on the test.
no one can know everything, but we MUST know how to read, be able to do basic math without a calculator, and to think critically. and to above all, question.
memorizing a list of answers to the test questions doesn't do squat.
in my day that was known as CHEATING.
NNguyenMD
(1,259 posts)traditional exams written by teachers.
I don't see how a child can do well on reading comprehension by regurgitating or memorizing facts. To do well on a reading and comprehension section, that child would need to be able to demonstrate the ability to read and interpret a passage. I think that the same would go for math, you can't exactly memorize random data to do well on a math test. You solve math problems with knowledge and understanding some basic knowledge in mathematics.
I am full aware that its not a simple task to teach children these skills, but I don't believe that test taking is sole root memorization.
Chorophyll
(5,179 posts)What about teaching kids to think? Teaching kids to question? Teaching kids to be inspired?
My son's fifth grade teacher had to derail a few long-term class projects (books they were reading, and a play they wanted to put on -- which also involved reading, of course) to accommodate the lessons that led up to the tests. I talked to her about it. She was frustrated, and the students either became bored or anxious.
Yeah, there should be a test here and there. But they should not suck up class time and dominate the entire school year.
knitter4democracy
(14,350 posts)Teaching to the test means all the student learns is that test. There is so much else out there, so much that isn't easy to turn into a bubble-sheet style assessment, so much else that employers say they aren't finding in recent grads but expect their employees to know. If we teach only the test, then we are harming our students.
A few other thoughts:
1. Every state's description of grade-level is different (though that's changing with implementation of Common Core), and so a child can be on grade level in one state, below grade level in another, and above grade level in yet another. Saying kids are on grade level ultimately is meaningless other than as a comparison of how that particular student did the previous year on the test so you can check for areas that still need work.
2. Tests are expensive. We don't just buy one set of tests and pay for their grading. No, we pay for one set of tests and their grading, buy at least two sets of practice tests and their grading, and then buy workbooks and teacher materials for every student. In education, we spend millions every year on the tests, and after awhile, you start wondering who's benefiting. The only ones who truly benefit are the testing companies (who are increasingly multi-national corporations doing this to everyone--get on an international teaching message board and see all the complaints about testing from everyone).
3. Learning to read in write in English takes 12 years on average to get to full proficiency. Other languages are far, far easier to learn to read and write in. Add in poverty and other issues that make learning difficult, and it's going to take us teachers time to get children to read and write proficiently. English really isn't that easy of a language to learn, even for native speakers.
4. Is success only a high test score, or can we measure success in other, more realistic ways?
patrice
(47,992 posts)the sum of their parts. Quantities do not capture QUALITIES. Machines cannot do that no matter how big and relational your databases become. It takes another human to perceive human qualities and make predictions, i.e. construct appropriately creative challenges, based upon those qualities.
Even if your computer could recognize that you might be angry, it can't respond to that probability in any but a REACTIONARY way. This means that machine produced instruction, i.e. teaching to the test, can lead only to certain kinds of development. The challenges that it produces (no matter how many wonderfully targeted ads google can crank out) can't be genuinely proactive.
lonestarnot
(77,097 posts)
elleng
(130,974 posts)spending time on broader aspects of curriculum than mere test-taking. Question may be defining 'success, and who has it, teacher or student.
patrice
(47,992 posts)adequate to that re-definition.
Teachers should decide whether they can/want to become learners and learners should decide whether they can/want to become teachers. Though test data can aid that kind of mutual research, it is not sufficient to drive it forward, in many/most cases, in any but the most mechanical modes.
We need authentic assessments and evaluations; that means WHOLE person (not just numbers, but authentic portfolios of student produced artifacts), ideally for teacher-as-learner and learner-as-teacher.
Spazito
(50,372 posts)setting up a photo scene, it is transitory and not sustaining. Teaching to the test does not impart knowledge that is retained but simply memorized, regurgitated at the appropriate time and then, by and large, forgotten.
Teaching to the test leaves out the underlying understanding of the subject matter and without that, it is worth than useless, imo.
sabrina 1
(62,325 posts)in terms of education. Forcing children to focus only a list of questions in a test rather than actually educating them, limits them to only what is on the test and discourages them from using their natural abilities to expand their thinking skills and interferes with critical thinking.
Learning becomes nothing more than passing the next test. It's great for the big Education Publishing Corps, they've made millions from NCLB.
Children are in school to LEARN, and their ability to learn and their enthusiasm for learning really knows no bounds when they are in an environment that is set up, not to suppress their natural abilities, as 'teaching to the test' does, but to expand the opportunity for them to take advantage of the special skills young children have naturally, to actually get an education.
Look at some of the most exclusive Private Schools who do NOT teach to the test, (seems to be reserved for the poorer class) and see the difference in the results. If I could I would abolish all testing until children are at least in the Third Grade and focus on Education and at that point, testing will be easy for them. And I am speaking from experience btw.
mike_c
(36,281 posts)You have cited the evidence yourself.
proud2BlibKansan
(96,793 posts)And even if it was, teaching to a standardized test narrows the curriculum. That won't help increase achievement. It only helps raise test scores. And test scores in all 50 states have risen since 2001, when NCLB became law.
Test scores don't correlate with achievement.
Geoffrey Canada kicks out every kid who doesn't meet his expectations. Kids with disabilities and kids who don't speak English are not welcome in his Harlem Children's Zone. The ones who are get a multitude of wrap around services that the national teachers unions have been begging for for several decades now. Let me hand pick my students and meet their social, emotional, medical and dental needs. I'll work miracles.
Rosa Luxemburg
(28,627 posts)Emphasis is put on letter grades. The pace is too fast for most of the students.
RebelOne
(30,947 posts)And her students always have top grades.
mythology
(9,527 posts)Teachers' unions worked a long time to get the additional protections that come from tenure. Having a scoring system from a test gives the possibility to fire the lowest 10% or some other metric. Keeping those protections is obviously in the best interests of the teachers. The people who are extolling the tests have their own biases. Many are interested in privatizing education which I think is a very bad idea.
I think that using such a metric to fire teachers is wrong, but we've clearly had a long term problem with the education system that has many sources. Decreasing resources for schools, more single parent homes, greater economic disparity between school districts, a culture that denigrates learning/intelligence in general, in the inner city a rise in gang activity, the idea that any tax cut is an inherent good and won't have a corresponding decrease in tax money, etc.
But that said, I don't know how you gauge performance on a large scale without some sort of quantifiable metric to determine success/failure, but that's complicated by the unique position teachers are in. If I don't produce, my boss my boss can fire me. A teacher can't fire a student who refuses to produce.
patrice
(47,992 posts)would like to suggest, could be a cover for less quantifiable motives of the privatizers. These would be things that have to do with qualities like certain assumed sets of values and/or purposes.
If that's true, it's pretty ironic, because teachers' failure to motivate students to produce for the numbers alone is, I think, due to the absence of less quantifiable motives, that is, things that have to do with qualities like certain assumed sets of values and/or purposes THAT ARE DIFFERENT FROM those of the privatizers.
Personally, I like the usefulness of an agreed upon starting point and numbers, data, quantities of things that result from standardized testing, can be a useful STARTING point as long as educators are not limited to that and, in fact, actively and aggressively prevented from developing anything but standardized test results. There should be a much more even balance between quantities and qualities in education.
In a dream world, students and teachers would produce portfolios that consist of a variety of things that are assessed according to agreed upon criteria. There would be aspects of teaching that are more like curriculum research that is not limited to the numbers associated with standardized tests. There was a movement afoot to go in that direction some years ago when I was in my master's program, but I'm out of date on this now. It was intended for teachers to produce portfolios of their curriculum research that show progress toward "whole person" design in curriculum.
That same concept applied to what students do was referred to as "authentic assessment" and it meant that students also produce portfolios of examples of their engagement in whole-person curriculum.
This approach refers to "teachers as learners" and "learners as teachers", meaning that teachers should learn, from their students, HOW to teach them, by approaching the relationship as interactive research. And students should teach teachers how to teach them by engaging in the shared research as self-study, so they become a part of the curriculum design process. And the result of this process would be a variety of students products ranging through the full spectrum of a student's aptitudes and so-called "learning styles", using strong aptitudes to motivate development (as much as possible) of weaker aptitudes and valuing BOTH.
gkhouston
(21,642 posts)Prepping for the test, taking the practice test, reviewing some more, taking the real test. 
When I was a kid, we showed up one day and took the tests. That was it. A couple of days lost per year, not several weeks. My daughter used to read in class a lot during the spring semester because it was so boring.
nadinbrzezinski
(154,021 posts)and why countries all over Asia, who were big on rote learning, are abandoning it.
Did I mention that they beat us in Math and Science regularly?
Lydia Leftcoast
(48,217 posts)I don't care what arbitrary test score some kid gets in school. If I were Education Czarina, the emphasis would be on getting kids to LOVE to read. The high-ranked schools would be the ones where the kids were encouraged to read a wide variety of books and to write about them--not standard book reports, but maybe alternative endings or picking one character and writing about how that character must have felt during the events described in the book. There would be 15 minutes to half an hour of free reading every day in elementary school.
Any school that just drilled kids on reading would get an F.
The Republicanites don't want Americans to love to read, because then they won't watch mind-numbing TV or obsess about pro sports while the country goes down the crapper.
Note that the wealthy send their kids to private schools where they are EXEMPT from standardized tests, and not all their kids are smart, either, not by a long shot (says she who TA'd at two Ivy League schools).
Pale Blue Dot
(16,831 posts)I like to think I've been able to teach them the skills they need to be good readers and writers AND instill in them the creativity to be happy, healthy, and productive human beings. Teaching to the test is only successful in rare instances and totally skips the last part.
Have you ever taught 110 6th-graders in a year? I doubt it.
Esse Quam Videri
(685 posts)all other curricula is put on the back burner - namely science, history, geography etc.
