The Financial Times reports on a new phenomenon: educators around the world see the pandemic as an opportunity to break free of standardized exams.
Tony Stack, a Canadian educator, was developing a new way to assess children even before coronavirus. The decision to scrap end-of-year assessments after the pandemic struck presented the chance to put the “deep learning” approach into practice. “It offered an opportunity for an authentic learning experience, outside some of the constraints of an exam,” said Mr Stack, director of education for Newfoundland and Labrador province. This alternative model, used in 1,300 schools across eight countries, that prioritises skills and independent thinking “set a way forward for a more ethical approach to assessment,” he explained. “Skills that students need to learn through the pandemic cannot be assessed in a single test,” he added.
Most viewed the abrupt cancellation of exams in countries around the world as a regrettable loss that would diminish learning and life chances for a cohort of young people. A vocal group of educators also saw an opportunity to call time on the traditional exams system they say is unjust and outdated. “The pandemic has exacerbated all these problems that were already there with exams,” said Bill Lucas, director of the Centre for Real-World Learning at the UK’s Winchester university.
He believes traditional assessments unfairly standardises children of different abilities, fail to capture essential skills and put young people off through its rote-learning, one-size-fits-all approach. “Survey after survey says creativity, critical-thinking and communications are what we need. Exams don’t assess those things,” Mr Lucas said. “Covid has forced us to ask the question: ‘do we want to go back to where we were or do we want to stop and think?’” Rethinking Assessment, the advocacy group he co-founded to push for change, has attracted support from teachers, trade union leaders, policymakers and academics. Among them is Sarah-Jayne Blakemore, a Cambridge university neuroscientist who argues that exams such as the GCSEs taken by 16 year-olds in England exaggerate stress and anxiety at a time when teenagers’ brains are still evolving. “We need to reassess whether high intensity, high stakes, national exams such as GCSEs are still the optimal way to assess the academic achievements of a developing young person,” she wrote late last year.
https://www.ft.com/content/9d64e479-182c-4dbd-96fe-0c26272a5875
He believes traditional assessments unfairly standardises children of different abilities, fail to capture essential skills and put young people off through its rote-learning, one-size-fits-all approach. “Survey after survey says creativity, critical-thinking and communications are what we need. Exams don’t assess those things,” Mr Lucas said. “Covid has forced us to ask the question: ‘do we want to go back to where we were or do we want to stop and think?’” Rethinking Assessment, the advocacy group he co-founded to push for change, has attracted support from teachers, trade union leaders, policymakers and academics. Among them is Sarah-Jayne Blakemore, a Cambridge university neuroscientist who argues that exams such as the GCSEs taken by 16 year-olds in England exaggerate stress and anxiety at a time when teenagers’ brains are still evolving. “We need to reassess whether high intensity, high stakes, national exams such as GCSEs are still the optimal way to assess the academic achievements of a developing young person,” she wrote late last year.
High stakes exams have problems. But there’s a big difference between exams and tests. Tests pretend to be diagnostics, like blood tests, which show us the inside of a student’s head. Of course, they don’t; they’re a social performance, an interaction, and what they train students to do is to be very good at that weird interaction. Exams, otoh, don’t pretend to be diagnostics. They do ask students to put on a performance, and the aim is to set a task that could only be done well by someone who knows what you want them to know.
Exams aren’t really about the student. Exams focus on the subject, which is why they are the entry-point to any profession that requires a body of knowledge or training. You can’t be a lawyer, doctor, cosmetologist or pilot on the say-so of your teachers.
The big question is, when should school focus on the students, and when on the material? High-stakes exams are great, imho, for seniors wanting to get into specific college or career paths. They’re rubbish for gauging student growth for its own sake.
I’ve never heard that “tests” are diagnostics pretending to see inside the student’s head in order to measure growth—vs exams are focused on material not student. The terms are used interchangeably as to function, & there can be various assessment functions. Granted it’s common enough to call interim curriculum assessment “tests”, vs final or midterm “exam” which covers all the same material as the interim tests at once, before moving on to next semester’s or next year’s curriculum. The function there would be review of mat’l, hence reinforcement. Neither is a gauge of student growth for it’s own sake, both are focused on the subject.
Measures of “growth” as used in US are just comparisons of students’ current vs previous test (or exam) scores on subject curriculum . They are an outgrowth of high-stakes annual state-standardized tests, where a teacher’s or school’s student scores are compared to all those in the state, and used to “grade” teacher/ school “performance”—with consequences for teacher evaluation/ school funding. As that proved to be overly/ arbitrarily punitive, so-called “growth” started to be measured too: if you can show improved growth, punitive results can be postponed or avoided. Unfortunately this doesn’t get around the primary problem with state-standardized tests, which are in fact too general to target specific curriculum taught. One ends up with a hobson’s choice: do your own tests as well in order to gauge IRL curriculum mastery [hence two sets of tests], or accept the testing co’s inaccurate, blurry vision [teach to their test, if you can].
I know “exam v. test” isn’t an explicit distinction, like formative v. summative assessments or whatever. But I was educated in one system (high-stakes testing) and teach in another (accumulation of teacher-conferred grades) and feel keenly that there’s a subtle but profound difference. Even in elementary school, I rarely did a fill-in-the-blank worksheet or took a multiple choice test, and never after the age of about 12. Those assessments don’t allow students to perform – they just passively pick or insert things – and all the stabilizer muscles involved in turning classroom learning into knowledge never develop. Plus, it puts the teacher at the front of everything: she’s coach and judge, advocate and jury. Complicated.
NCLB and Common Core give us the worst of both worlds: high stakes, but also not a good assessment, because it’s more worksheet/MC crap. I would love to see us figure out exactly what we want to do with assessment, and let that dictate how we do it.
Students do not benefit from lock-step testing. Standardized tests with high stakes tend to pigeonhole students, and the results are often used to deny students opportunities for which the student is labeled “unworthy.” Competency based education has narrowed curricula leading to a focus of reading and math “skills.” The poor, ELLs and classified students perform worse on these types of tests. Authentic assessment where students can demonstrate understanding and knowledge offer diverse students a far less biased way for young people to show what they know. What students learn from project based assessment will remain with students far longer than subjects evaluated by rote tests. They acquire real knowledge and deep understanding of the subject matter they have learned.
Prior to NCLB many school districts were working on various types of portfolio assessments in attempt to modernize assessment. After NCLB made its unrealistic demands on schools, many of the alternative assessments got lost in the shuffle. Some schools in New York continued to develop performance assessments, and they formed a consortium. Their alternative assessments continue to be used today. http://www.performanceassessment.org/
I’m not sure I am a fan of portfolio assessment either unless it is a continuous process by which the work of a student is collected over time in which an increase in knowledge can be demonstrated. I want to know a student is growing/maturing in the way they process information and what they are able to process. I am not interested in a stage performance of greatest hits.
We need to reassess whether private businesses, no matter whether they are (arbitrarily) labeled for or not for profit, should be allowed to make claims of validity with the tests and other competency-based products. Every superintendent, principal, and teacher’s inbox is constantly flooded with spam from these companies. They all say the same thing: Our product is a rootin’ tootin’ miracle! Just give us your children’s data and we will make magical magic magickness miracles come true! Just sign on the dotted line and give us a down payment… And the gullible buy it. And there are some pitifully gullible people calling themselves experts working in the U.S. Department of Education. Yes, I am looking at you, Jessica Cardichon. It is time to call out the two-bit used car salesmen in edu-business for what they are, con artists.
The state tests have never gone through the validation process where the test questions are norm referenced. In the hands of politicians the tests are arbitrary. They can raise or lower cut scores based on how many students they want to “pass” or “fail.” Teachers cannot use them for instruction, and it takes months to get back the results. These tests enrich testing companies, and politicians use them as tool of privatization. The tests waste time and money, and too many districts narrow curricula to mostly reading and math. The tests do not benefit students that need a comprehensive education with science, literature and the arts.
That is right, they are arbitrary — by design.
There is a fundamental conflict between private business and science.
Private business is all about keeping information proprietary and secret.
Science is all about making the data available to everyone so data, models, experiments and conclusions can be checked by non-biased third parties.
Proof of validity and reliability of methods and data should never be left to private companies.
But you can’t check what a company won’t release.
We now have the absurd situation where private companies are quite literally controlling people’s lives with virtually no check on that control.
When governments exert the control, I it’s called fascism, but when private companies do it it’s called free market capitalism.
And don’t forget about the racial bias.
And don’t forget about sinisterer ways the scores being used.
And don’t forget that anyone who wants the testing to continue is an ally of Betsy DeVos.
How about the DFERs, LCT, who stubbornly cling onto the testing industry’s coattails? Just WHO in government is financially benefitting from this?
As I’d commented before, in honor of the memory of Karen Lewis, this has to STOP, & THIS year.
I wish the GameStop surge had put all the hedge funds behind DFER out of business. They are parasitic entities.
Absolutely. Have been working on this issue for numerous years, and essential now to open up the barriers between levels of racial and economic young to opportunities not tied to the levels of economic and traditional groups in this society. It is essential in a Democratic society. Opportunities must be leveled and supported.
Other countries have found that this philosophy of equal educational opportunities must be the basis of a Democratic society to flourish. The future of the young must not be bound by leveling opportunities.
From The Educator’s Room – a petition that has been started to stop standardized tests for the rest of the school year.
https://www.change.org/p/joseph-r-biden-standardized-tests-suspension-and-waiver-for-2020-21-school-year
utm_source=share_petition&utm_medium=custom_url&recruited_by_id=92511730-9a3a-11ea-b648-7db9e2b92489