A Criticism of Standardized Testing Questions
Posted in Politics by George
I was reading the latest issue of Time Magazine, which had a nice feature on the state of the American K-12 education system. One point struck me: many students today are still being asked to focus on memorizing, rather than manipulating, information. In other words, teachers are asking students to memorize facts such as names and dates that are easily available on Google or other internet search engines.
Why are students being taught this way? Standardized testing is one key reason. Teachers are held accountable by means of standardized tests, and these standardized tests are mostly fact-regurgitation.
Some facts are very worthwhile to memorize. However, Time points out that dates and isolated concepts are not easily retained. Furthermore, when these facts are easily available on the internet, and there seems to be a computer within fifty feet of anywhere in the US today, it doesn’t seem very useful to make memorizing these dates and isolated concepts a requirement to pass a test required to graduate from high school. I would argue it is much more important to teach students how to understand these facts rather than retain them. Understanding is what the workforce and our country as a whole needs today, not retention.
Standardized testing is a worthwhile concept. It’s important to be able to measure the performance of teachers, and that is exactly what the goal of standardized testing is. However, the performance of teachers should be related to how well are they preparing students to become adults and/or enter the workforce. Teaching them to memorize facts is not going to prepare them; teaching them to understand and formulate smart opinions is. Yet it is incredibly costly to measure the ability of students to do so (i.e. multiple choice tests wouldn’t work).
Standardized tests are intrinsically flawed in the means they must employ to be both cost-effective, objective, and hold teachers accountable. The only way to measure every public teacher’s performance to some degree at a reasonable cost is to make a multiple choice test, and the only way to make it fair for all students is to ask them to regurgitate facts they have learned. Employing thousands of graders to grade student written papers that would test their ability to understand facts/concepts would cost tons of money and be subjective.
In conclusion, standardized testing must change before it comes anywhere close to accomplishing its goals of getting more students prepared for adulthood and the workforce.
December 18th, 2006 at 11:59 am
The American system of education is designed to teach kids to analyze. This is in contrast to many other educational systems worldwide. European, Asian, and Australian models of education are all focused on facts memorizing. The educational system of the US may place an emphasis on learning facts when the students are young simply because the mental process for advanced analysis is not developed. However, by highschool and college students are asked to analyze and present their own views of important issues.
This is very much in contrats to other education systems. Whereas a US essay would ask which viewpoint was correct. A foreign essay would ask you to discuss the various viewpoints. In fact I have talked with several American students studying abroad who when they try to analyze issues in essays are marked down. I personally had a professor say that analysis is not for undergrads and that they shouldn’t attempt it. This was at one of the most prestigous European Universities.
December 18th, 2006 at 12:24 pm
I disagree with you on the notion that the American model of education is focused on analysis. I don’t know much about European, Asian, and Australian models of education. However, I do know that the baseline of American education, passing the standardized tests, requires almost all fact memorization and little analysis. Which European University are you referring to?
[I'm not disagreeing that there is a high level of analysis in American universities. The lack of analysis is in K-12 education.]
December 18th, 2006 at 12:32 pm
There is a learning curve associated with analysis. Meaning that students are required to do more of it the older they become. Quite frankly you can’t ask a 3rd grader to provide intelligent analysis but they simply are not capable of it. If you ask a 3rd grader if they would rather have 5 boxes of cookies or a 2400 on the SAT when they graduated, they would choose the cookies. However, you can ask them to learn facts. Later on as they develop more you can ask them to start analyzing those facts. Which is what happens. Moreover, learning facts isn’t bad. Its crucial to succeeding in the working world. If you have two equally competent employees but one has to constantly look stuff up to remember it and one has it readily available mentally, who would you choose?
While I brought up a specific experience it holds for the educational models.
December 18th, 2006 at 2:36 pm
3rd graders memorizing facts to pass - fine. I agree with you there.
12th graders memorizing facts to pass - not OK.
And employees who do a job continually will almost always have facts readily available mentally. But stuff you memorize is what you do on the job… not civil war battle dates…
December 18th, 2006 at 2:56 pm
Perhaps you should think back to your highschool days, did you simply have to memorize civil war battle dates?
Moroever if you are writing a paper on the civil war and discussing Robert E. Lee as a strategic planner, wouldn’t it perhaps be wise to know when the battle of Antietam was? Analysis and fact memorizing go hand in hand, because you have to have something to analyze. And as you analyze it you end up memorizing the stuff.
I feel that HS requires a lot more analysis then you let on. Or perhaps I just had better teachers than you.
December 18th, 2006 at 3:31 pm
No, my teachers thankfully did encourage a bit of analysis. However, that doesn’t change the fact that to pass these standardized tests, teachers are held accountable for teaching students how to memorize, not how to interpret. Perhaps the teachers “Oakton High School”, for instance, are better than the baseline. But students in high schools with low quality teachers that teach to the baseline are being taught to memorize. That doesn’t prepare you to exit high school and enter the work force.
December 18th, 2006 at 4:58 pm
Well if your teachers encouraged analysis and my teachers did as well, then what exactly are you referring to. These tests are minimum standards. The problem is if kids do not have a minimum of information on a subject then they certainly cannot analyze it. Because quite frankly you can’t analyze nothing. Thus you require them to know something and teachers then add on the analysis part.
December 18th, 2006 at 5:42 pm
But that minimum information means nothing today, when any student can get that minimum information in a heartbeat on a computer. Whether or not the student commits it to their short term memory for a test is unimportant. It is much more important to know where to go to find the information, and how to manipulate the information once you have it. We’re asking kids to memorize things they can look up on google in two seconds in virtually any location just for kicks.
December 18th, 2006 at 6:56 pm
Well memorization is a skill that needs to be continually practiced. It may only take 2 seconds but in a heart surgery the doctor cannot scrub out look it up and scrub in just so they can google what to do in a complication. A lawyer in a courtroom may have notes with them but may need to make last second changes and won’t have time to look them up. An enginner who is on site will need to know the facts. Committing crucial information to memory is neccessary to succeed. What is wrong with teaching this skill (and yes memorization is a skill) from an early age. The key is to require students to both know the info and for students to ba able to analyze it. Do you look up MC curves for every econ problem you do?
December 18th, 2006 at 7:10 pm
I agree that people need to memorize key information for their jobs. But that comes natural because it is something that is always on one’s mind due to the nature of work. You memorize crucial information relevant to your particular job/concentration/etcetera because you do it a lot. Memorizing facts of that nature is not something that becomes easier because you memorized a list of dates or names in high school - it’s just something the brain does. And it’s a lot easier to memorize when it’s something relevant to your life.
I don’t look up MC curves for every econ problem I do because I have used that information frequently. The same goes for a doctor, lawyer, or any specialized field. “Learning to memorize” is not something that should take thirteen years of education. Learning to memorize, and other basic study skills, should just be part of the learning, and not the standard for whether students pass or fail.
December 19th, 2006 at 10:57 am
Well then at what point does it become frequently used. If the students have a unit on the Civil War and study it for an extended period of time at what point should they be able to have that information easily accessible. Is it 2 weeks, 2 months, 2 years?
Moreover, memorizing IS a skill and practicing memorizing facts does indeed help memorizing things later. It is something that can be improved upon the more you do it.
December 19th, 2006 at 11:25 am
It becomes frequently used if you use it regularly in everyday life. If you don’t think about the Civil War for a few years, you’re going to forget much of it. Information easily becomes readily available mentally if it is information you use every day. And why else would you need information readily available mentally anyways if you didn’t need it regularly?
Memorizing is a skill that can be practiced to a degree, but once you’re in high school, I don’t think it should be THE skill that defines when you are ready to enter the “real world.” Memorization should only be a small part of the baseline students need to pass these standardized tests.
December 19th, 2006 at 2:11 pm
Well if you go to school everyday then I suppose it should be readily available according to your defining characteristics. Moreover these tests don’t test kids years later but rather in that same year. Finally memorization is not the key component of high school education but only one component just as you urge.
December 19th, 2006 at 6:01 pm
I don’t think we’re going to come to a consensus.
Yes, the knowledge will be readily available - for the moment - not for life. Knowledge fades if you don’t use it for a while. In the case of civil war dates - replace for a while with potentially never and you see the problem.
And I am not saying it is the key component of high school education - the problem is that it is the baseline that is required to pass standardized tests rather than a more useful component of education.
January 1st, 2007 at 10:37 pm
Hey all. I think the LSAT or the MCAT is a good model for a standardized test; much more so than the SOLs. I also feel like the problem with many lines of arguments is that they take a position that is black and white, that things are either one way or the other. Memorization is an important skill in education, but it is only one tool and should not be considered the end all be all of learning. The reason that facts are memorized is so that trends can be recognized, concepts understood, and arguments can be strung together. In biology memorizing certain facts is crucial to understanding certain systems, and in effect, how different diseases work. This is crucial to understanding how to change part of that system to cure or prevent that disease; but simply memorizing vocab words and individual parts of the system would do you no good in the real world. The test has to incorporate concepts, not just facts. My molecular cell exams did a good job with this. I remember one question that asked what you would see if a certain part of the signal in ER transport through cytoplasm was messed up. This was a question that was hypothetical and required you to conceptualize the system and predict the outcome. This is an example of a good question. Understanding the system helps it to stick in my memory much better than memorizing fragments of information.
January 1st, 2007 at 10:43 pm
Perhaps that’s only part of the issue, though. Another issue is that the standardized tests take too much freedom away from the teachers. It takes the creativity out of teaching and turns the teachers into people who are tied down to a very specific curriculum. I think it makes teaching a much less attractive profession. By placing a huge amount of emphasis on the standardized tests we are saying “we don’t respect you enough, teachers, to be independent and creative. We want to have a death-grip on how you do your job and we think that we know what you should teach more than you do; even though it’s your freaking job and you would know best what needs to be taught.” Where’s the trust?