Standardize This

Susan Engel directs Williams College's teaching program, and in an Op-Ed in Sunday's Times, she made quite a compelling case against the worship of the standardized test.

As someone who's always thought the obsession over standardized test scores was a real betrayal of the core principles of a good education, I was at once gratified to hear such a bigwig pointing out the problems with standardized testing and also demoralized about the possibility that there's any chance of convincing the movers and the shakers that standardized test scores do not accurately measure real learning.

As it stands, we actually have to take time off from the business of teaching kids to read, write, and think so we can make sure that they get the bump in test scores that comes from becoming familiar with the format and the arcane writing medium—one that exists nowhere else in nature—of the CAPT test. The CAPT provides some useful metrics of English learning, to be sure, but it does not at all measure the total picture of the things we teach in a good English class.

For example, one of last year's "editing and revising" section questions asked kids which of four choices reflected the accurate spelling of the word "occurred." When, pray tell does one teach this particular skill in a curriculum, and how does a right or wrong answer on that test actually reflect a student's learning in the 10th grade?

As long as we rate learning by the ability the fill in bubbles with a number two pencil, and as long as we worship at the feet of the gods of flawed data, we do kids a real disservice.