When a student goes to public school, he or she can expect to be greeted with countless standardized tests per year, beginning from before the time kids even know how to write (standardized, multiple-choice tests have been given to kindergarteners! See here). By the time they get around to high school, standardized testing is a pretty firmly-planted reality of anyone’s educational experience.

At Lincoln alone, students take the CAHSEE, CSTs in four subject areas, EAP, Common Core, PSAT, WPA and more.

Aside from inventing some snazzy new acronyms, these tests’ benefits are negotiable, at best. While they aid the school district and state in setting benchmarks for basic content comprehension, they detract from a focus on more exploratory learning in the schools. That is, learning because students are curious, not just to pass a test. They can also take up valuable instructional hours that teachers had planned to use to teach new content, at the end of the year leaving students behind in their learning because they did not finish all subject material.

Lion Tales asked Lincoln teachers and students to give their perspectives on the value (or not) and the necessity (or not) of the current standardized testing process.

U.S. History teacher, Mr. Cullison, said, “The value of standardized testing is that it shows to what extent the students have learned basic information… Did the kids learn what they were supposed to learn?” He added that, in an ideal world, “There would be one statewide standardized test. I would prefer they kept the CST for each subject and bagged the CAHSEE.”

Still, Cullison recognized the reality. “They’re only complying with state laws and requirements. The school certainly shouldn’t do any more than the state requires.”

As an AP teacher, Cullison has to prepare his students for the AP exam. While it has not affected his classes’ ability to get through the material because he has already “factored in days that will be lost to testing”, he commented about the litany of tests given in the spring semester. “The kids are getting bombarded with standardized tests right before the AP exam. It needs to be reduced… I don’t have a problem with it; I just resent that it’s being changed.”

Mr. Pringle, Chemistry teacher, noted the complexities of the universalized approach to testing. He said, “If it was used well, you could compare schools’ achievements. But what if you compare schools that have different populations? You have to be understanding about how different schools have different challenges, in making comparisons.”

Pringle often teaches class material out of order, so the standardized tests are not always given at the right time of year. He said, “Each teacher has their own idea of how topics should be learned. You’re not testing it the way teachers are teaching it.”

Pringle concluded, “The question is, how local should the governance of the school be?” in regards to which tests the state, district and school all require students to take.

Sophomore Matthew Guarneros had more fundamental issues with standardized testing, questioning their ability to measure students’ knowledge and intelligence with their multiple-choice format. He hypothesized, “You could have someone who knows how to solve a problem better than a teacher or a test would. Some people have much better answers than are available on a standardized test answer book.”

Guarneros added, “It doesn’t in any way, shape, or form show people’s general intelligence.”

All in all, the main problem with the numerous standardized tests is their redundancy. Students take four or five tests per year that ask extremely similar questions, when just one state or national test would be sufficient to ascertain and compare students’ progress against other students and schools. Testing may be something necessary for the government to require, but it should not consume so many days, and so much class time. Rather than having students fill in multiple choice bubbles row after row after row, schools need to focus on the real, relevant learning that is self-contained inside of the classroom.

For further reading:

Kindergarten teacher details ‘lunacy’ of standardized tests for kids

2013-2014 Testing Calendar

Why standardized tests don’t measure educational quality