Let’s Talk About Assessment

I will begin my blog on testing for intelligence by quoting the Prime Minister of Singapore, who when asked to explain the high performance level of their children replied, “I think we should do more to nurture the whole child, develop their physical robustness, enhance their creativity, shape their personal and cultural and social identity, so they are fit, they are confident, they are imaginative and they know who they are” (ASCD, 2010, p. 1). I believe that used to be the United States philosophy for educating their children. I cannot say with certainty how we should assess our school children, but I know that we should be assessing them as a whole individual. We need to find a way to look at the whole child, and assess not only cognitive ability, but social-emotional competency as well. We want to measure a child’s degree of socialization. After all, one of our main goals is to guide the child on their journey from childhood to adulthood as a productive, contributing member of society. We also need to assess their self-image and psychological state – perhaps then we can decrease the number of adolescent and teen suicides.

I can tell you what we should not do, and that is continue to measure children’s learning, along with teacher and school performance, based on standardized tests. “If a school’s standardized test score are high, people think the school’s staff is effective” (Popham, 1999, p. 8). We must stop trying to equate random test scores with performance and quality. We also need to stop taking monies that could be used to improve schools, and contribute to professional development and more qualified teachers and giving it to big corporations to design and implement testing that tells us very little about a child. Parents should stop allowing themselves to be brainwashed into believing that their child’s high score on a reading test means they are ready to take on the world.

Whenever I want to compare education in the United States to what occurs around the world, I look at those countries whose children outperform us; this would include China, Finland, and Switzerland among others. You know what, they do not use standardized tests in those countries the way we do. The head of education for Finland, Dr. Sahlberg, when asked to explain their superior results in education replied, “We are not actually talking a lot about numeracy or literacy, the agenda for change is more about increase of the arts and physical education into curriculum, and the highlight of 21^st century skills or as we call them citizen skills” (ASCD, 2010).  In the United States we have done the opposite, removing the arts, recess and physical education.

What is even more ironic is that Dr Sahlberg says most of what they are doing in Finland originated here in the United States. I believe it is time for us to trust our education professionals to assess students’ learning – like they do in Switzerland, and reinvest all the money spent on standardized testing into putting the arts and physical education back in our schools. Dr. Sahlberg also said, “If you want to learn something from Finland, it is the implementation of ideas. It is looking at education as nation-building. We have carefully kept the business of education in the hands of educators” (Snider, 2010, p. 2).  Again in the United States we have done the opposite, causing some of our best educators to walk away from the field. In a major city, with one of the most troubled public school systems, we have the mayor appointing lay people to run it; whereas in Finland you have to have a background in teaching to advance.

A properly educated teacher knows how to assess the learning being done by every child in their classroom; this was part of their training. A quality school will have in its employ a well-trained child psychologist. I know that we can devise effective and accurate means of assessing students’ knowledge and abilities without the primary use of standardized tests.

References:

ASCD. (2010, December 14). What other countries are really doing, take two. The ASCD            Community Blog – Inservice. Retrieved August 3, 2012 from                                                      http://ascd.typepad.com/blog/2010/12/what-other-countries-are-really-doing-take-two.html

Popham, J. (1999, March). Why standardized tests don’t measure educational quality. ASCD.Educational Leadership 56 (6). Retrieved August 3, 2012 from http://www.ascd.org/publications/educational-leadership/mar99/vol56/num06/

Snider, J. (2010, December 13). Lessons from Finland’s education system. The Huffington Post. Retrieved August 3, 2012 from http://www.huffingtonpost.com/justin-snider/finland-education-system_b_794644.html