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Testing, Testing MAG
Albert Einstein once said, “Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted.” Even he saw the obvious fallacies in testing.
The basic purpose of school is to equip us for success. That's what teachers, principals, governments, and oceans of bureaucracy exist to do. But success is measured in so much more than just scantron bubbles and fill-in-the-blank questions. A person's morals and character play a far greater part in personal achievement than knowing trivial facts.
Testing results in kids forgetting what they've learned. As contradictory as this sounds, I have firsthand experience of its truth. The only reason high school students learn is to ace the test. As soon as we step out of the classroom, we dump the information to create space. We then repeat the process. Even the honors kids do not retain much by the end of the year. And for the all-important finals, we reteach ourselves as much of the material as possible.
Furthermore, testing is not an efficient measure of intelligence. How well someone can memorize notes is not an indicator of smarts. Intelligence has more to do with comprehending material and the accompanying curiosity that results in students wanting to learn more. You cannot coerce someone into learning.
But the biggest injustice kids have to deal with is the biased, agenda-ridden concept of standardized testing. Some exams in my state are designed to grade the school. I believe that these do not further the learning process. Tests that are presented under the pretext of learning are actually used to brand a school and its kids as satisfactory or sub-par. These tests only have to do with funding, following the great fallacy of the No Child Left Behind Act. Schools must have adequate test scores in order to receive government funding, despite the fact that schools with lower scores are the ones that need the help most.
Consequently, schools with slashed funding turn to drastic measures of “teaching to the test” and cutting classes like creative writing, art, and even science – subjects that encourage the deeper thinking and reasoning so critical to personal development.
I hope that in the future, testing will become just another tool in the arsenal of teaching, not the savior of the educational system.
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This article has 23 comments.
I totally understand where you're coming from, but I also think that testing is already a learning tool. How many kids would forget the information anyway, especially if there was no test. I think that some tests are a little ridiculous and check to make sure we can remember tiny details than try to make sure we know the general concepts, but I also think that we need tests in order to retain at least some of the information.
I really agree with your mention of No Child Left Behind and tests increasing or decreasing funding. But I think that some standardized tests are needed. For instance, an ACT or SAT score helping to determine who gets into a college is an excellent thing. Otherwise, acceptance would be based even more on gender and race than it is now.
I would really like the schools to do away with tests and think of some innovative way to actually make kids actually care about what they are learning, because if you think about it, tests are more of a threat than anything from the student's point of view. If we don't do well, then we won't get a good grade, and our GPA goes down. Somebody needs to make school fun, and it would be so much easier to retain the information. Of course, this isn't really feasable for most districts, I'm lucky, I go to a school district that has extra funding to do stuff sorta fun.
Of course, some kids wouldn't care about school no matter what.
Most standardized test are more skill based though... what math can you do, how well you can comprehend something you just read, or basic grammar rules. really no studying involved...
As far as classes go projects are usually half done and meaningless, group work put off to one person, and speeches have the shy student failing no matter how much they know. Test are the easiest way to quickly check retained knowledge no matter how briefly and if you studied right you should retain it for a month at the least, but sadly most people cram and quickly forget...
It's very aggravating to have a teacher who's entire class revolves around his or her tests.
And why haven't we dumped NCLB yet?
You don't forget everything you study for tests. I can still remember where Gabriel Garcia Marquez was born, and what each president did for my country. Tests are useful.
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