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Teaching to the Test
February 29, 2004The phrase "Teach to the Test" comes up often in connection with standardized testing and education reform. It's usually a derogatory term employed to slam the use of standardized tests, as in: "With this new mandated testing, teachers are going to be forced to stop teaching the curriculum, and just teach to the test."
On the flip side, supporters of standardized tests have also used the phrase. President Bush has said that if it's a reading standardized test, there's nothing wrong with teaching to the test, because you'll be teaching kids to read.
The reality is somewhere in the middle, which isn't good.There are two broad problems: using high-stakes tests aligned to state standards (which may or may not be well-written), and using the same version of the test, year in and year out.
In the first case, the high-stakes nature of today's educational climate has caused states to write new standards documents, and to write (or find) tests specifically aligned to these standards. This is all well and good if the standards are well-written, but often they are not.
Kimberly Swygert wrote about this in "From Bad Standards to a Worse Test," which includes the classic line that Maryland's new math standards "take the algebra out of algebra." In that story, teachers at a very good school were torn between teaching algebra, or "teaching to the test" based on an entirely different set of skills.
The darker side of "teaching to the test" arises when a school system uses the same exact edition of a test, year after year.
One standardized test (which shall remain unnamed) was given every year in one district, and it was no secret it was the same edition with all the same questions. Not only that, but it was a poorly written test which had apparently undergone no field testing whatsoever. (Yet it was supposed to gauge our students' learning?)
In this particular standardized test there's a line drawing of an elephant with a grid superimposed. Next to this is a larger grid, without any picture. The student is to redraw the picture of the elephant, larger this time, using the grid as a guide. (Don't get us started on what the heck this activity is doing in a high-stakes test . . . )
Well, in one school where we've taught, one week before the test, the entire teaching staff received dittos of this exact same activity, only with a picture of some other animal instead of the elephant. Ostensibly, this was a "test prep activity" but we know it by its more common name:
Teaching to the test.
This extends my comments from another one of the articles.
Standardized tests follow my general rule that if you can't do it yourself, then the government (the ten ton gorilla) will come in and do it for you. Since the K-12 teaching establishment couldn't seem to guarantee that high school graduates knew much of anything, the government is forcing the issue with its NCLB. The details are left up to the individual states, but these tests are after-the-fact (too late for the student), lowest-common-denominator tests that no school should use as a criterion of great teaching. As a parent, I have looked at these tests and I am completely unimpressed. If schools teach only to the test, then I want to know what they are doing for the rest of the school day. If schools say that they waste time on teaching the material on the test, then they should look at the test again and explain to parents why our kids shouldn't know that material.
At our public school, I went to a big meeting they had on our state's test where they had parent and teacher groups analyzing the results and wondering what they should change to improve. I went there to look at the actual exam questions. They were trivial and vague. I wondered if the results meant anything. Nobody else was looking at the sample tests in math and English. They were just pouring over the test statistics. I remembered a couple of typical exam questions and I have mentioned them to other parents - to their very great amazement. The problem with these tests is that they set minimum goals which then become the target goals of the school. (the minimum becomes the maximum) Set your sights low and try to convince parents that they are high. This exacerbates the problem of average or above average students. The schools are forced to pay attention to numbers and can get much better test results by focusing on the lowest level students. The better students don't get what they need. The very best students (or those with involved parents) will get by OK. Many others will not. (Although I don't know why it should have to be an either/or proposition for lower and upper ability students.)
My advice to other parents is to look at the actual problems - on standardized tests, on homework, on quizzes, and on classroom tests. Then you will know what is going on.
Steve March 1, 2004 01:33 PMI visited a school frequently where I would see students carrying around some test about circus clowns. It was a district standards question prototype. The students joked about it. The district scored poorly on everything but clung to the idea that if every kid could do the clown problem things would be better. I always wanted to tell them to stop clowning around.
aschoolyardblogger March 1, 2004 03:13 PM