National Standardized Testing
May 17th, 2008 by Mr. Miles
I was over at Jose Vilson reading his post about educational carnivals and he stated something that my co-workers and I often argue about; the need for a national curriculum and standardized test.
State’s rights aside, math and the sciences are supposed to be universally accepted truths about the world and as such there is no logical reason for differences in mathematics or science education in any of the 50 states or US territories.
I’d like to see one of the presidential nominees from either party to adopt that as part of their party platform.
I’d like them to take the idea one step further and actually institute standardized tests that are designed to measure a child’s relative progress against a set of standards rather than absolute progress.
Every child is not equally equipped at the beginning of a school year and this fact should be taken into consideration. No Child Left Behind often require so much paperwork and so many interventions that if a child who really isn’t ready to move on to the next grade has a scatterbrained teacher who does not do the required paperwork then that child will just be moved to the next grade based on a technicality without the prerequisite skills needed to be successful.
Standardized testing should be subject to the same specifications for good research as any other form of respectable data collection. By this I mean that there should be a standardized pre-test to assess where a child is currently. Personal experience has shown me that prior year ( in my case elementary school standardized test results ) are often not a good barometer for student knowledge. The pre-test should take place during the 1st weeks of school after which a treatment ( in this case standards based instruction ) would prepare the child for the end of year post-test.
This testing design ( Pre-test Treament Post-Test ) would allow for an individualized barometer of student success while still teaching to National standards. Teachers would be able to differentiate instruction effectively and testing would reflect this.
The current batch of norm referenced tests shouldn’t even be used in math and science and the current batch of criterion referenced tests do not take a child’s prior knowledge or lack thereof into consideration when score reports are published.
Relative growth should be a determinant of a child’s success on standardized tests as well as measurements of a child’s ability to meet certain nationally mandated standards.
Sounds great, but wouldn’t it be prudent to perform the pre-test at the end of the preceding year? This way we have time to get the scores in, create student schedules, and prepare appropriate lessons to meet the students where they are. If a new child enters the system, then they must also take the pre-test at the time of entrance. This way, we have a great barometer and waste no time at the beginning of the school year waiting for the pre-test scores to come in (or to take the test in the first place).