standardized testing

I got into an argument with one of my favorite people last week about funding allocation and Milwaukee Public schools.  I think the person I argued with speaks for many citizens of this city and this country who think that since their tax dollars are going to public schools, that the schools should be accountable to the tax payers in demonstrating that funding is being used wisely.  On some level, I understand this impulse.  There are certainly ways in which I feel that some funding of MPS has been misspent.  The problem lies in deciding how we will measure MPS's accountability.  Unfortunately, I feel that many Americans feel that education has become a commodity, and should be measured as such.   In our current market economy, this translates in "How can we get the most bang for our educational buck?"  And the way we decide to measure this has been given in the form of standardized testing.  (Which, as some previous posts have pointed out, is a big business, in itself. )  

This is a flawed answer to a flawed question.  

For one, as we have learned in every ed class that we have taken so far, teaching critical thinking skills is a central part of receiving a good education.  Standardized tests are, essentially, designed to eliminate any possibility for the existence of critical thinking.  It is difficult to consider multiple perspectives and the construction of knowledge when there is only one right answer which can be indicated by coloring in one of five bubbles.    In fact, creating standardized tests and promoting standards that demand an unequivocal answer and strongly suggest what should and should not be covered as part of course content, can quite possibly reinforce social inequalities in our society, as a whole.  We reward students and schools that recapitulate the status quo and punish ones that challenge it.  That is not a good teaching or learning strategy.

If there is any question whether standardized tests are truly capable of measuring learning in an effective way or if  teaching to "standards" make teaching better, ask a teacher.  They are, after all, experts on this subject, something that the standardized testing and standards debate seem to frequently ignore.  How many teachers have you encountered that say "Standardized testing is great! It truly measures the capability of my students in an unbiased way.  It is a critical part of a constructive learning process."  Instead of letting politicians or for-profit testing companies determine what is best for our students and what is important to learn, why don't we let educators decide?    

Critical Pedagogy

First off, I loved this article.  I know this is going to sound cheesy and ridiculous, but I don't care.  When I read this article, I felt like I had found a home.  The topic of this article is largely why I decided to leave academia to go back to school to get certified to teach high school.  Clearly, the article is written from a sociological perspective (which is why I love it).  This perspective is something that I have been teaching my students on the college level.  At some point last year, while I was teaching a book that discusses the hidden curriculum at a public school in California, I realized that rather than teaching *about* this idea, I wanted to become a high school teacher so that I could try to enact change based on this idea.  

This is why I am here.  I understand that knowledge is socially constructed.  I agree that what we recognize as knowledge and learn in classrooms has been constructed through a lens of power and frequently perpetuates inequalities and reinforces hegemonic power relationships. If we want to effect change, if we want to eradicate inequality, we have to change how knowledge is constructed and communicated.  This is overwhelming.  So the question that presents itself is this:  This is an interesting theory, but what can we DO about it?  It's such a huge, all encompassing issue.  First, we must make sure that our curriculum represents multiple perspective so that we don't privilege one construction of knowledge over another. For teaching history, this means including a lot of primary sources and making sure these primary sources reflect multiple perspectives.  It's about teaching critical thinking skills, more than just data.  Perhaps, the most important thing we can do as teachers is to teach our students to challenge knowledge, to think critically about it, and even to think critically about what we teach them.  

Chapter 22

I thought there were some very interesting points in the article.  I think that a lot of people assume that a lot of queer kids don't know they are gay until they come out.  The assumption is that middle school kids don't know that they are gay.  The article discounted this.  When I was in high school, there were about five of us that were extremely close.  One of whom is gay.  He knew he was gay since he was in middle school, but he never came out to anyone (besides his therapist) until college.  Why not?  Not even to his extremely close friends.?  Because we live in a heterosexist and homophobic world.  My friend was terrified of how he would be treated, the potential violence he could encounter.  And that fear is real.  

 Some of the other posts have critiqued this article for not providing any specific recommendations for what we can actually do to help LGBT youth in our classes.  Here's one simple thing that we can do.  I believe we talked in class about the controversy in West Bend about some parents trying to remove some books from the library, or reclassify them for older readers.  Apparently, the reason the books raise some objections is that they contain characters who are openly queer and may even have queer relationships.  For this, one of the parents said (I will paraphrase here): "I think that the book should be removed.  If it is left in the library, I think there should be an equal number of books in the library that teach children who might consider being gay how to turn away from such a path."  There are a lot of things wrong with this statement.  For one, usually kids don't consider (i.e. choose) being gay.  They are gay. period.  Second, the straight equivalent of the book in  question would not be one that teaches kids how not to be gay, but rather a book with straight character engaging in straight relationships.  That would be 99.5 % of the books already in the library.   Although we do have some out role models in the media that weren't around 20 years ago, that doesn't mean that heterosexism or homophobia have disappeared.  The fact that we can name all of the openly gay role models that come to mind show how rare they actually are.  Can you name all of the straight role models for kids these days?

So maybe something we can actually *do* is to make sure the libraries at the schools we work in have books that are queer-positive.  

(Amy - I know this post is late, and I don't expect credit for it, but I really wanted to write it anyway.)