I have come to a realization recently. Maybe I’ve actually known this for a long time but am now able to articulate it. This realization is that the generation of kids that I have taught (I’ve been teaching for 12 years), have been so tested throughout their school career that we have actually created people that learn information only to take the test and then it is purged from their brain. Grant it, some information will be retained just because. But, if students approach learning with the idea that they only have to know this information for the test rather than for the actual learning that comes with that information, we have done an extreme disservice to our students. As an example, a few weeks ago, I assigned a timeline and maps assignment all about the American Revolution. Students used 4 class days to work on the assignment and then had time at home to finish. It was due the Monday prior to Thanksgiving. The Monday following Thanksgiving, the drill was a sheet listing 4 of the important early battles of the Revolution (ex: Lexington & Concord) and asked the students to give a date (year) and why the battle was important (first battle, first American victory, etc.). Students complained and complained and complained…”how are we supposed to know this?, “Do we have to know the exact date?” etc. I then hung up papers around the classroom with the names of various battles of the Revolution on them. Students were to go to each of the pages and write something about that battle, and they couldn’t write something that someone else had already written. It was very telling. The timeline and maps assignment was not just something to take up time, but was intended to help the students understand the relationship between the battles and to see the bigger picture of the entire Revolution. Some of them may have remembered some information, but for the most part it was not the case. And that is just one example.
So, how can we change this interpretation of learning for our students (and their parents sometimes, too)? How do we make sure that students become life-long learners?
In my opinion, we need to evaluate students in a variety of ways and evaluate our teachers in a variety of ways. Evaluating student learning ONLY by the test scores in math and reading (MD tests science in 8th grade also), does not give a true sense of the learning that student has actually done over the course of their school career that year. We need to use the test scores in addition to other ways of measuring student learning, such as performance evaluation, presentations, projects, creative assignments, etc. The same could, and should, be said of teacher evaluations. We should not only be evaluated by the scores a student receives on a test, but also through a variety of other measures such as observation, mentoring, etc.
You should speak to my wife, this is one of her favorite topics. It really troubles here a great deal.
From my prospective, I’m frankly a bit disturbed by the fact that many people I meet on a day to day basis do very little learning or thinking. It’s strikes me as odd, but many people are perfectly content to simply follow along, not studying anything as adults, and not really pondering much either. It amazes me.
I’d hope that one of the achievements of education would be to spark a desire to learn, and a desire to keep learning. And certainly to spark the desire to engage in lifelong learning while engaging in critical thought. A risk of the teach to the test method is that it can destroy the love of learning.
On that, one thing that I think is frequently not appreciated is that the often heard suggestion that people love a chance to match themselves against a test as a standard really isn’t true. Most people hate that, and will avoid it if at all possible. Testing is necessary, to be sure, but once learning devolves to an endless series of tests, the joy is gone from it.