Standardised testing - Why do we do it?
I do not like standardised testing. Not at all. Why? There’s a few reasons. Here’s some of those….
- It takes away the unique characteristics of our learners. It homogenizes out neuro-spicy thinkers that are so beautifully unique and makes them a number and a grouping, without considering their beautiful thinking, problems solving, rabbit-hole-like curiosity for specific areas of interest,
- It doesn’t know what our learners can actually do. It doesn’t allow young people to show what they can do, in an area that they enjoy. Rather, it ties them down and forces their thinking into topics and skills that neither interest nor inspire them. It doesn't show that they are flat=pack furniture legends, that they are sustainability warriors, that they are empathetic friends, that they can cook up a legendary meal, that they can make a room of peers laugh when laughter is the best form of medicine needed, that they can code an app. There is so much more to our young people than the judgments of standardised testing.
- It assumes we should all know and do the same things. And yet, the world needs unique, diverse, and confident thinkers and doers. We acknowledge the need for learners to find their unique interests and strengths and yet we sit them in rows to compete against each other to get a data set that provides nothing but the need to learn formulaic grammar patterns, a writing styles. For what need? Definitely not the need of our beautiful creative neuro spicy learners who are far from needing to be any sort of ‘working towards’ or ‘working beyond’. Why do we want to put our learners into a bucket of mediocrity? Why do we care where we sit in a continuum of worst to best? Why?
- It does not look under the iceberg to understand why learners respond in certain ways. It does not consider that while one young person was dropped off at school after a nutritious breakfast, another walked themself to school with nothing to sustain them for the anxiety-ridden hour of testing ahead. Add to this the learners that being with them a world of anxiety and expectations that hobble them and place unnecessary stress to their (and their families) world. can you imagine what a room full of standardised tests and a ticking timer on a screen does to these souls? And yet we choose to do that… regularly.
- Standardised testing is for the benefit of the older people in a room, not the learners themselves. Do you really think our young people enjoy being herded into a room, treated like a group of homogenised robots while completing tasks in which standardised responses are expected? Only to receive results months later that have no real impact on their growth as curious, creative, and collaborative warriors of the world? There are different ways we can allocate funding. there are different ways we can see strengths in our learners. There are different ways we can find areas for support. Standardised testing is not that.
Our young people just need to know that it’s ok to be themselves. It’s ok to embrace their strengths while acknowledging their not-so-strengths. They need to know that they are perfectly perfect however and wherever they are in their development. Our job is to inspire these strengths, to support confidence to ignite curiosity and to protect from social, physical, and psychological danger. I can't help but think that every time we open the door to a room set up for a standardised test we kill a curiosity fairy and chip away at the confidence of the beautiful, unique, creative, and spicy young people that we spend our days nurturing and supporting.
The irony is real.
