Research Paper Update

My research paper if focused on the current preponderance of standardized tests in the American education system.  Today, they are used at nearly every grade level to place students academically, determine federal funding for schools and even make admissions decisions (for both colleges and elementary and secondary schools).  Although their importance cannot be denied, my paper evaluates rather or not standardized testing is really helping our education system and students.

Thus far, the book I read, The Case Against Standardized Testing: Raising the Scores, Ruining the Schools by Alfie Kohn, has been and incredibly useful source.  It provides a clear and concise case against standardized testing and specifically outlines its negative consequences.  The book itself was displayed in a question-answer/rebuttal type format but the actually text was filled with essential facts and valuable insights.

Personally, I think standardized tests, although necessary to some degree, are used too widely in today's school system.  Aside from a standardized test at school (or perhaps if you were chosen as a contestant on Who Wants to Be a Millionaire), one will never encounter an environment like those tests.  Rarely (if ever) would someone have take a test or complete a task entirely alone, without collaboration or ability to look up a forgotten obscure fact, in a strictly time environment. The multiple choice format is especially useless.  In the real world, it is rare to only have to recognize a correct answer and not even generate it yourself.  Furthermore, the knowledge tested in these tests does not reward deep thought; instead working quickly and guessing well seem to lead to more standardized test success.

The norm-referenced test is an exceedingly common, yet often misunderstood aspect of the standardized testing world.  Scores from these test are not reported numerically or based on a percentage of questions answered correctly.  As the name implies, a "score" on this test is not a score at all but a percentage reflecting how the student performed relative to other test takers.  For example, scoring in the 90th percentile (90%) on a norm-referenced test indicated that the student's score was higher than 90% of the the other test-takers.  Likewise, a student scoring in the 10th percentile was outscored by 90% of his peers.  Although one of the primary goals of standardized tests is to compare students, these norm-referenced tests can also be incredibly damaging.  Even if students personally improve, their peer group often improves with them, meaning that students often maintain a similar percentile.  This can be especially harmful for low-scoring individuals, who may become discouraged with school as they begin to believe they are stupid.  Likewise, a high scoring student could become complacent.  Furthermore, the scores from these tests do not measure learning at all.  Because of the percentile scoring method, students could all do reflectively poorly on a test but someone would have to score in the 99th percentile and someone would be in the bottom 1% of test takers, even if the scores from all students were fairly similar.  Lastly, and perhaps most unfairly, norm-referenced tests are designed so that there is a separation between students' scores.  This means that they are not testing the material that is most important.  Instead, difficult questions are specifically designed so students who score well on the test generally will answer them correctly.  This design often favors wealthier students as material and knowledge gained outside of class is often placed on the test as a way of differentiating students.

I was especially surprised to hear about a ridiculous reading comprehension featured on a New York state standardized test.  The question involved a fable (a clear adaption of the Tortoise and the Hare) in which a pineapple challenges a hare to a race. (Here is a link to an article featured in the New York Daily News containing the full story and question set).  Here's a quick summary: all the animals in the forest bet that the pineapple will win, thinking it has "some trick up its sleeve." However, when the race begins, the pineapple does not move and the hare wins.  The forest animals proceed to eat the pineapple.  The moral of the story is stated as "pineapples don't have sleeves."  Students are then asked a series of perplexing and subjective questions, including why the animals ate the pineapple and which animal spoke the wisest words.  This case provides a clear point about the luck and guessing ability (as opposed to intelligence or critical thinking) measured by standardized tests.  Students who did not think too deeply and quickly guessed an answer for the perplexing questions were rewarded with more time to complete the rest of the test while students who thought more deeply about the confusing questions may have run out of time on the rest of the test, even if they knew the other answers.