Reply #52: Standardized tests do one thing and one thing only.

[Pacifist Patriot]

Test how well a student can take a standardized test.

My son is in an honors English class. He has over a 100% average because of extra credit work and turning in all his assignments early. I received an email from his teacher last week that darned near made me cry. Her praise of his work ethic, writing talent and intelligence was almost embarrassing. She's entering some of his work into writing competitions.

This same child is in a basic Algebra class after having taken an on-line algebra course last year. He's struggling to maintain an A at a 90 grade average. Math just isn't his thing and he really has to work at it. (Hmmmm... can't imagine from which parent he inherited these academic tendencies.)

At any rate, they had their first standardized testing phase at nine weeks of school. These were "practice" tests the teachers reviewed with their classes when the results came back. He scored in the 98% for math and the 75% for English.

According to him, the math test was pretty easy and an answer was either going to be right or wrong. On the English test there were oodles of questions that could be interpreted in several ways and he didn't interpret some of them the way the test writers did. I asked for examples and he could only recall a couple, but he was absolutely correct. They were questions that could be viewed in a number of ways based upon your perspective. His teacher even commented on his assessment of some of these ambiguous questions.

My son has the ability to recognize these different perspectives and was put in the position of having to guess which way the test writers were going with it. In my opinion, that's an additional skill that I would find valuable as an employer but a standardized test has absolutely no way of measuring.

People all possess inherent worth and dignity, and in that respect are "equal." But we do NOT possess equal talents, skills and intelligences. I'd like to see an educational system that affirms both the children's inherent value and encourages the uniqueness of their personal gifts.