A teacher explains how useless high-stakes testing is for some students, and for this one student in particular:

He writes:

In response to a state standardized test question about analyzing the author’s use of hyperbole, a student of mine recently responded with one brief sentence: “I don’t know what analyze means.” This student (who receives special education services) sat with his head down for most of the testing session. I was struck by the fact that he felt compelled to finally lift his pencil and scribble this when he could have easily just turned in a blank test booklet. It tells me that, even at a school that does not emphasize the importance of these tests (like ours), they are stressful and demoralizing to students. Students’ self-esteem is damaged and they feel the need to explain why they can’t produce a satisfactory answer. Mainly, it reminds me that these tests are a huge waste of time and resources that could go toward engaging students in actual learning.

But what does it tell them?

A test scorer looking at this student’s response would conclude that the student’s response is “totally incorrect or irrelevant or contains insufficient information to demonstrate comprehension (0 points).” Same for most of this student’s other answers. So, he’s got a “below basic” achievement level in “literature,” according to the test. Most people could tell you that by listening to the kid read aloud for one minute. So what else can we gather from his poor performance? He’s probably not learning anything in school? Doesn’t keep up with the assigned readings? Doesn’t finish any of his writing assignments? His teachers must not be addressing his unique learning needs by teaching him all the state instructional standards… I bet he attends one of those “corrective action” schools that have failed to meet AYP measures over and over… (Hey, we should close all those schools!) …if he even attends at all.

The reality is that he attends an alternative high school that doesn’t believe in testing their students in the traditional way. Instead, this student demonstrates his learning through the completion of a multidisciplinary project each semester. His project is based on real world learning that he engages in at his internship at a reputable local motorcycle shop. Last semester, with the guidance and support of his internship mentor, he built a “go-ped” motor scooter from scratch using technical schematics that most of us would be hopeless at deciphering. He collected data on the cost of all the materials as well as retail pricing and crunched the numbers to determine how much he could reasonably charge for his product. He researched and wrote an essay on the inadequacy of driver education programs, presenting evidence from several studies that showed that teen drivers are largely unprepared for emergencies on the road. He developed a hypothesis and and analyzed the results of a science experiment that involved taking samples of and growing bacteria in a petri dish (How “dirty” are those go-ped handlebars anyway?). Instead of a final exam, he created and delivered an exhibition where presented evidence of all of this learning to a group of his teachers, mentors, and peers. Pretty amazing accomplishments for a student who is “below basic,” I’d say.

I keep this student’s response to the “analyze” question in mind as a good example of why these tests pretty much useless.