Article Critique 2
Standardized Testing: Does it Measure Student
Preparation for College & Work?
Pte Ska Hinapa Wi Poor Bear
Oglala Lakota College
Standardized Testing: Does it Measure Student
Preparation for College & Work?
Introduction
This
article “Standardized Testing: Does it Measure Student Preparation for College
& Work?” was written by Dawn Camacho, M. A. & Vickie Cook. Ph. D. It was published 2007 April 1 in a non-journal
online submission through a scholarly educational research site called
ERIC.
In
this article it discusses the adaptations taking place within many schools
across the nation and how they are all preparing students for college and/or
the workplace. First, it debates how
each educational institution develops and constructs the best educational
practice within its power for their students to be successful. Additionally, it addresses how to encourage
the instructional process and go beyond procedural knowledge. According to this article, the ultimate goal
in the majority of what schools have become is to have students be effectively
prepared for college after high school.
Finally, this article focuses on beginning with the final stage of this
learning process for the student, which is to apply their learning and meet
their goals of entering into the workforce or the college of their choice.
Summary
This
article talks about the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) act, with which most of the
collected works about NCLB indicates that there is a need to measure our public
schools’ success in preparing the whole child.
Accordingly, the question then became whether or not standardized
testing is measuring the actual preparation and what tool is the most useful
for measurement in this process. Consequently,
who determines what tool(s) should be utilized and at whose discretion is this
tool becoming the norm? These are
questions this article asks and addresses.
Equally
important, the world that consumes the human experience wants quantitative
proof that the public schools are meeting and maintaining the expectations of
the stakeholders. This in turn places a
tremendous burden upon the educational leaders to prove themselves adequate in
the education systems whether they are set at national, state or local
level. School districts across the
nation have the same affliction of students’ success. Additionally, many schools have set high
standards for themselves by adopting the mottos such as “all students college
and workplace prepared” (Voltz, 2004, p.2).
Many
of the nation’s schools, such as Illinois have demonstrated their success in
reaching this goal by the use of the ACT results. Robert Linn (2000) illustrated how in the
past five decades we have based education reform on test accountability. Linn stated “There are several reasons for
the great appeal of assessment to policy makers as an agent for reform” (p.
4). He concluded that 1) “tests and
assessments are relatively inexpensive” 2) “can be externally mandated” 3)
“rapidly implemented” and 4) “results are visible” (p.4).
More
often than none, in the school system after the first year a standardized test
is administered, the lowest results are gained than each year after the scores
are greater. Why is this? One reason the researchers for this article
discovered, is that the educators and administrators re-align their instruction
and curricula to better match the test objectives. According to the research done in this
article this situation appears to illustrate that the policymaker’s reform was
effective.
Yet,
according to W. James Popham (2002), a professor emeritus in the UCLA Graduate
School of Education, he expresses his opinion that “it is wrong to evaluate a
school by how well its students perform on standardized achievement tests” (1). He contends that standardized tests are
constructed from the Army Alpha test, which was used during World War I to
identify possible officer-training candidates.
In fact and according to the article, the Alpha test was designed to
measure the aptitude of the candidates and to identify those candidates who are
superior intellectually within the group of test-takers. Presently, tests in the public schools are
intended to measure student achievement, not aptitude. Conversely, because the current standardized
tests are based on the Alpha test model, they actually measure achievement as a
student’s relative standing within the test group and not the acquired
knowledge or actual preparation of a student.
ACT
(2005) core assessment system states that their “guiding purpose is to help
people achieve their education and career goals by providing information for
life’s transitions” (p.5). It may
actually indicate student preparation more effectively than other types of
standardized testing. They do this by
providing “assessment, research, information, and program management services
in the broad areas of education planning, career planning, and workforce
development” (ACT, 2005, p. 5).
The
ACT core assessment system provides more than standards-based, rank-ordered
information. The interest inventory
involved in this system also provides information to the school about the types
of classes students should be enrolled in to be better prepared for college. ACT believes that the skills needed for
college readiness are the same skills necessary for entrance into the workforce
training programs (ACT, 2006).
One
of the research questions was “what do districts do with their test results?”
(Easton, 2000, p.1) Easton’s reported
results were that about 77 percent of the districts rated “evaluated school
improvement” (p. 3) as the greatest reason for the use of standardized test
results. These results were concluded in
a random sample study conducted by the Consortium on Chicago School Research
and the Illinois Business Roundtable.
Adjacent
to the standardized testing, many schools across the country have adopted the
goal of preparing all students for college, like Poway Unified School District
in California. Donald Phillips,
superintendent, and Kevin Skelly (2006), associate superintendent, stated the
importance of aligning the curriculum from the college readiness expectations
down through the kindergarten expectations.
They explained that if the students re to be ready for college whent hey
graduate from the Poway district as the final goal, then their “instructional
program should be designed backwards from this goal” (p. 3).
In
conclusion, I found this article very informative on the best practices for the
use of assessment tools are to focus on the alignment of standards, assessments
and curriculum. After reading it I was
able to see clearly what is meant when ‘they’ say backwards design. I can see clearly how and why schools are
beginning to do this for their students to better prepare them for the future
in education. I enjoyed this article and look forward to learning more about
this topic as I move forward in my learning as an educator.
References
ACT. (2005). Resource manual. Iowa City, IA: Author.
ACT. (2006). College and workforce training readiness:
Ready for college and
ready for work, same or different? Iowa City, IA: Author.
Easton, J. Q.
(2000). Testing and assessment in
Illinois school districts (ERIC
No.
ED470296). (ERIC Document Reproduction Service No. ED470296)
Linn, R. L. (2000,
March). Assessments and accountability. Educational
Researcher, 29 (2), 4-16.
Phillips, D. A.,
& Skelly, K. (2006). College readiness for all [Electronic version].
School Administrator, 63 (1), 26-32. (Professional Development Collection
Accession
No. 19361723)
Popham, J. W.
(2002, February). Right task, wrong tool [Electronic version].
American School Board Journal, 189 (2), 18-22. (ERIC Document
Reproduction
Service No. EJ640871)
Voltz, R. (2004).
College and workplace prepared is the correct emphasis.
Superintendent scribbles #37. Retrieved April 16, 2006 from
http://dist5.bcsd.
k12.il.us/Scribbles%20Archive/Scribbles%2037.pdf
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