You Want Education Reform — Drop the Test.
At my school and a commonly used slogan for california schools, we say, “Dude, Be Nice.” This is a game changer as it’s to the point and polite, and it’s effective as well.
In schools, regardless of what state you’re in, if you want to see any sort of real reform in education, “Dude, Drop the Test.” This is just as clear, and will never happen.
Drop the state test, means stop being driven by enormous education publication companies that make them and sell them to states — along with the idea that they are valid, and have always worked.
The state test makes it about the product in a child’s education. Everything is about the product.
In California, students know that the test does not impact their ability to graduate, but they have to take them. This way, when a kid takes a test that means nothing to them, this accurately measures their ability and when compiled with others can define the quality of a school.
Now students in California don’t feel threatened by the state assessment, just the schools do.
In New York, a student has to pass several regents exams in order to obtain the regents diploma when they graduate high school. Everyone is threatened in this case.
In fact, here’s a list of all of the assessments students need to take in the US, per state, as almost all of them have one.
America has bought into the product as a measurement for learning, because we know at the root of education we must assess to know comprehension levels. But what this does is make failure the wrong option — which in essence limits our learning as it indeed leads to increased risk.
But then how will we know that we learned? Or really — How can we tell if schools are of good quality?
Get ready for this one folks, because everyone says it and yet it falls on ears covered with hands wearing gloves made from the newest edition of Pearson’s finest, “Measure the process, and then you learn from the product.”
This is the way you accurately measure a student’s ability — by observing their ability. Dude, this is not hard.
How about this, drop the need for a time frame attachment while you’re at it. When did learning something by a certain time mean it’s learned correctly? In the US, special education accommodations most commonly given in high school — are ‘extended time’.
If school’s did not have a test to weigh them down annually, in what seems to be every other grade from kindergarten to senior year, you would have the ability to factor in levels of creativity so outside of the box that for certain would begin the revolution for reform.
If administrators knew they could fail, and teachers knew that they could fail, and students knew that they could fail — as long as we all learn from this, and revise, edit, reform, and attempt to improve, that would allow growth. We would be able to improve because we are focused on improving. Not whether or not we will improve on the only day we can measure improvement.
A test makes failing conclusive. That means you may never ever know what you didn’t at that time. Dude, what? Why?
If someone takes a test and fails, then retakes and fails but improves, and then a third time takes it and passes, do we say they still failed because the average of the 3 scores will most likely be still failing since the first two were? Do we discredit passing because they failed twice?
Or, do we say they succeeded, because they passed the third time, and they went back and relearned what they didn’t the first and again the second time, and eventually got it and did well the last time around?
In the US, in at least 23 states, we say they failed. Drop the test, and you will see reform. The test prevents reform. In order to reform, we have to be able to focus on it, try it, fail at it, and retry. The test doesn’t allow failure. The test holds tight to the need for the test, even to where we administer it in a pandemic, and are told it won’t mean anything.
Dude, then why give it?
