1. Can you think of guidelines, other than the two described in the chapter, to be used in evaluating a classroom teacher’s test-preparation practices? If so, what are they?
I am in a real quandary on this question. Part of my dilemma is due to an SAT preparation course that I will start teaching next week at my school. This class is also the basket into which I have thrown all of my TPA “eggs”. Before I had read this chapter I was going to use as the basis for my lesson, readily-accessible previous forms (“ethically not OK” ?), and study guides which have the same format (“educationally indefensible” ??!) as well as going over some testing tips.
[This quandary hit me the evening of 2/27, and I was cranky all day 2/28.]
Now after ruminating on it, I don’t want to add guidelines, I want to remove one, for I think that educational defensibility is a crock. For a few reasons.
First, the test questions are the learning goals. We learned this in our “Understanding by Design” tasks in EDU6171. You start with the assessment. You work backward from there, building a gradual and compelling chain of lessons and learning activities that virtually ensure that the assessment can be successfully completed.
Second, if it isn’t tested then it isn’t learned. All your best lessons are mere vapor, unless you test for that information and demand recall. The only way a high school student can prove that they were doing anything for 12-13 years of education is if there is a test on it.
Third, testing is not going away. I don’t think standardized testing should go away either. I took a couple of AP tests, I took the PSAT, the SAT, I took the ASVAB, I took the GRE, I took the WEST-B, I took a couple of WEST-E’s and I know people that took the EIT and the Foreign Service Exam. Popham urges us to not teach to the test but if the test were a work of staggering genius which could really measure what we thought students should all know and measured it in a way that we all thought was fair, we would definitely teach to that standard. The truth is testing needs to go that way and not retreat before the onslaught of those who want to relax a simple standard of one student, sitting quietly, writing out all that he or she knows about a given topic.
Based on the fact that tests have valid goals, that testing forces students to drill and rehearse, repeat and remember, and that testing is not going away, I think teaching to the test is fundamentally defensible. So teach to the test, but if you are still holding onto your quaint purist notions, you can, like Popham, qualify that it is the test or rather its contents to which you are teaching.
I resolve to make real connections between test content and standards. I resolve to use every ethical means possible to get my students to succeed at standardized and other tests. I resolve to view the test as a minimum bar, a flawed, imprecise and quirky bar, but a necessary bar. I resolve to thus teach to the test and then teach, teach, teach some more. I resolve to quit belly-aching about the test, and start teaching.
Finally, I think testing and test preparation is a social justice issue. Take a look at the following data and see if you can spot the trend(s)…
(College Board, 2011, p. 4)
I teach to the exam so that students can jump the barriers that their family income have presented to them. I teach to the exam so that they can get into college, stay there, and then get their children into college. It’s the long view, it’s a definite challenge, but it starts with excelling on the current standardized tests that we have right now, as a minimum. |