Standardized Testing: To do or not to do!

Standardized Testing: (a) Personal definition, (b) An analyses of its pros and cons, and (c) A personal note on the efficacy of standardized Testing as practiced in India.

Personal Definition of Standardized Tests

In teaching 5 sections of grade 6, at the end of every chapter, I take a test that is common to all students. It is for 1 hour and the rubric to measure their grades is also the same. End of it I compare performances of different sections. The test is ‘Standardized’- A form of test where all test takers answer the same questions in the same way. The test is scored in a manner that is “standard”. The chief purpose is to compare the relative performance of individual students or groups of students. They can include any type of questions. They can be pen and paper or use a computer.

Pros and Cons of using Standardized Tests

Pros

·??????It is an “Assessment for accountability ”. There are certain objectives with which one starts a school year and Standardized Test is a tool to evaluate the outcome and that holds the imparters of education accountable.

·??????The “standardized format, coupled with computerized scoring, reduces?the potential for favoritism, bias, or?subjective evaluations.” (Standardized Test., 2015, para. 3).

·??????They can be used for a variety of purposes, such as to decide if a student should be in special needs care, aptitude tests or college admission tests or determine if students have achieved a certain level of competency in the required area.

·??????They can serve as a check to see if the learning objectives are met or not.

Cons.

·??????Let’s go back to my own example of grade 6 testing of all 5 sections. The data that I get at the end in the form of marks is used by the school head to label the sections as ‘weak, average or bright’. This is emotionally damaging to the students.

·??????Although Standardized Tests are marked as free from subjectivity, “Test Bias” (Partnership, 2015)is a human reality that we cannot escape from.

·??????Holding a school or teachers accountable for learning gaps can be very stressful and misused by authorities.

·??????They are discriminatory against the outliers, such as students of different culture or with special needs.

·??????The portion of educational achievement that they measure is very less. If education is preparation for life, standard tests measure very minimal part of it. The teachers would end up teaching for the test instead of using best practices.

Final Thoughts

Every year, in my country, at the end of grades 10 and 12, the students of the whole country, appear for central examinations. Irrespective of who they are and what their level of expertise in a subject is, everyone writes the same exam, is graded based on the same rubric and the final grades or marks are given as per the same mark scheme. The previous government, before 2019, abolished exams at grade 10 and brought in “CCE or Continuous and Comprehensive Evaluation” . A very comprehensive manual was prepared by the curriculum policy makers listing in detail the philosophy and practice. In my opinion, it was a brilliant document. It created a lot of changes in the society.

The positive changes were: (a) Student suicide rate dropped as the stress of learning reduced. (b) A number of schools moved from being completely conventional to experimental and creative. (c) Teachers learnt to be creative as national lever professional development started. The challenges were: (a) The grade 12 standardized exam was not abolished. But students who entered grade 11 after CCE for grades 1 to 10 were not prepared enough academically. (b) Students were stress free, however there was no way of measuring how they were growing. (c) he teachers had to conduct multiple formative assessments and write descriptive reports. This had to be done by hand as all teachers did not have access to technology. This increased their burden. In a nutshell, while students blossomed, the teachers suffered.

Hence the first thing that the present government did, in 2019, was to abolish CCE and return to exams in grade 10. I believe instead of abolishing CCE, the new government could have set up a committee of educators to watch over the whole cycle of(a) setting objectives, (b) implementing objectives, (c) assessing outcomes and (d) redefine objectives; using “Tyler’s Objectives-Centred model ” of curriculum evaluation. Standardized Testing would have helped in evaluating the whole model year after year and modify it as required. That would have been a middle path, that could have been made a standard model for the country’s public education network. As of now, the vigilance for students committing suicide after the Standardized Examinations of grades 10 and 12 has returned.

There is regular police patrol placed on the bridge of Yamuna river in New Delhi during and post the examination season. It had gone during CCE and now is back!

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