about advertisements for commercial products as they are about political ads. How many articles of clothing do they purchase because of their brand name rather than the quality of the item?
The societal costs of our schools fixating on standardized tests rather than critical thinking are enormous. Unfortunately, our political leaders at all levels of government are lacking in the sophistication that is needed to know when something is not working. These political leaders ultimately are involved in virtually every facet of how our schools work. They control how schools are funded, what can and cannot be taught, what qualifications are needed for teachers, what obstacles are placed in the way of those who want to teach but are not certified, how long the school year should be, and even how important the school’s “Friday Night Lights” is relative to enhanced resources for students with special needs.
The question that both our leaders and our society as a whole must ask is, “What connection do these standardized tests have to developing high-school students who, upon graduation, are capable of thinking critically and compassionately about the problems that face us as a community?” And that “us” is the more than seven billion people living on planet earth.
For whatever reason, our leaders, Democrat and Republican, have been reluctant, even scared, to challenge the power of the Almighty Standardized Test. However, where reality has failed fiction has succeeded. Read and/or watch the following exchange at a teacher workshop as presented on the NBC program “Friday Night Lights,” on June 24, 2011.2
Citizen Questioner:
Getting back to the issue of standardized testing, what improvements can be made in regard to college admissions?
Lead Educator:
I think that one of the options is that Texas needs a baseline for their standardized test scores and accountability for those scores. Now we can learn a lot from looking at California’s Integrated Accountability System and that has the state academic performance index, and it’s also monitoring the federal adequate yearly process and program improvement.
Tammy:
And I would like to add just one thing to that if I could. I feel that we’ve spent a lot of time today talking about these standardized tests, and I think that we’ve already acknowledged that the system is failing us, and if we continue to just keep looking at these tests and focusing on these tests, then we will fail our students. Then if we keep pushing those kids towards the ever-important test score, we’re pushing them to fail.
Lead Educator:
It seems naïve to presume that these test scores don’t exist.
Tammy:
I don’t mean to presume that they don’t exist, but the students have very different needs and we have a responsibility to see what those needs are and to address them.
Lead Educator:
What would you have us do? Sit down with every student in the state?
Tammy:
Yes, I would.
It’s remarkable what we can learn from this 215-word exchange. We gain considerable insight into our values. The scene illustrates the divide between the language of bureaucrats and that of advocates for the well-being of students.
Let’s start with the seemingly well-intentioned and harmless question in the clip that is submitted by someone who is either a parent or a journalist. “Getting back to the issue of standardized testing, what improvements can be made in regard to college admissions?”
The citizen is interested in two items: college admissions and standardized tests. It is this kind of question that sets the table for educational bureaucrats to focus on matters that presumably can be measured, but which also may have no relevance to what students need.
What we need are students who have curiosity about learning, who develop critical thinking skills, and who have a commitment to being a positive-change agents in our society. Not only are we not doing that well now, but recent history would indicate that our educational system has been helping facilitate the growth of far too few responsible citizens.
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