Stick with me on this blog, please. It may seem at first that this is a real estate blog, and then I delve into individual learning styles, but the real point of this blog is that current standardized testing cannot be used as a tool to assess all teachers' abilities to teach.
The house across the street from ours was for sale. For a few months, there was a For Sale sign on the front lawn. At the beginning of December, the For Sale part of the sign was gone, but the agents' info part - the bigger part at the bottom - was still there. Right after Christmas, the sign had a top again. It read Sold. I noticed the 3 versions of the signs. My older son noticed the 3 versions of the signs. My husband and younger son didn't notice that the top part had been missing, or when the Sold sign went up. They were both surprised when I told them that the house had sold, even though the sign had been up for days. When I asked them, neither had noticed that the original top of the sign had been missing for 3 weeks.
It seemed to me that these changes would be hard to miss. The sign was directly across from our house, and easily visible when we'd drive to our house - from either direction.
This got me thinking. How was it that two smart guys could not notice something that seemed so completely conspicuous to me and Jacob? Individual differences. That's how. Everyone sees things differently. People like different things and accomplish similar tasks or goals through different methods.
Everyone learns differently, too. What might seem obvious to a teacher and half the class might not even be on the radar of the other half. One student learns best by listening; another by seeing; and yet another by doing. Many educators have caught on to this concept in the past decade or so. Classroom lessons and assessments include strategies and methods that allow students to learn and demonstrate learning in a variety of modalities.
So how is it then that standardized tests are administered only one way- paper and pencil - and typically only assess a few subjects, leaving many untouched? Every state has different assessment requirements for its public schools. In Pennsylvania, the annual standardized tests for grades 3-8 and 11 include reading and math. Writing and science get assessed three times during a student's 13 years from K to 12. PA's testing is fairly rigorous compared to other states' assessments. Some states don't evaluate writing or science, focusing exclusively on reading and math. What about history, foreign language, the arts, technology, etc? Why is writing only looked at 3 times, but reading is assessed 6 times? Isn't history important?
Politicians, education reformers, and many fed-up taxpayers advocate merit pay for teachers. I agree. Teachers and all school personnel should be paid based on performance, not just how many years they've been in the classroom. However, proponents of merit pay often include in merit pay a component that ties a teacher's students' standardized test scores to that teacher's salary increase. This post is not going to explore the many areas of concern regarding standardized testing, i.e. testing biases, the effects of outside influences on a student's progress or lack of progress, teaching to the test, and adults cheating for high-stakes tests. My focus is that the current system of testing just doesn't cut it for inclusion in merit pay.
Why? Many reasons. The tests are subject specific and leave out a good percentage of the subjects that a student learns at school. If there's no history assessment, what test results would be used for the history teacher's merit pay? And, there's no standardized testing in the primary grades (K to 2). What test results would be used for the 1st grade teacher's merit pay? And how about those Spanish teachers, art teachers, vocational teachers, special education teachers, etc?
If the tests don't include all subjects and all grade levels (and I am certainly not advocating for more standardized testing!), the merit pay systems that include tying standardized test results to individual teachers' raises overlook the fact that the education provided by many teachers isn't ever assessed via current standardized testing.
Back to my theses...current standardized testing cannot be used as a tool to assess all teachers' abilities to teach. Even without exploring the many areas of concern tied to standardized testing, it's simply not equitable to all teachers in a school or a district.
There's a posting on the Freakonomics' website debating the concept of teacher merit pay. Interesting reading if you've stuck with me this long.
