¶ … Teach to the Test
As William Hatfield presciently warned in 1916, when the ultra-efficiency of industrialization first begin threatening the independence of educators to craft curricula, "an education that focuses on memorising information to ensure reaching a single benchmark is an inadequate measure of success" because while "twelve years of school life has made [students] adept at memorizing & #8230; many of them are novices in thinking" (Mills, 2008). Since disastrous passage of the No Child Left Behind Act in 2001, which mandated standards-based educational practices and required states to devise testing devices to gauge student achievement, Hatfield's admonition has been proven to be disturbingly accurate. Since standardized testing became standard operating procedure for America's public school system, countless teachers have expressed their mounting dissatisfaction with the rigid and formulaic curriculum structures imposed on school districts by state legislatures. As an education major anxiously awaiting my opportunity to teach South Carolina's third graders, I share in the general consensus that teaching to the test is an unsustainable philosophy with far more drawbacks than advantages. However, because our state currently administers the Palmetto Assessment of State Standards (PASS) test to students in grades 3 through 8, it is crucial that I do not let my own preconceived notions influence my judgment regarding such a complex and confounding issue. To that end, I have reviewed a total of five research-based articles published in scholarly journals during the last five years, in an attempt to objectively analyze the trend of teaching to the test in the proper context.
In a 2011 article entitled Teach to the Test? which was published by the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, standardized testing researcher Richard P. Phelps thoughtfully examines the concept of mutual exclusivity which pervades the debate over testing-based curricula. By forcefully challenging the commonly held "assumption by many critics that test preparation and good teaching are mutually exclusive" (Phelps, 2011), the author succeeds in drawing a distinction between rote and ineffective memorization drills and inspired lesson crafting which also adheres to statewide standards. Phelps holds...
While Phelps strives throughout the article to maintain an unbiased perspective, stressing that proper instruction while teaching to the test provides valuable educational benefits, he repeatedly returns the focus of his writing to the inherent flaws in standards-based assessment schemes. When the author observes that "there are two senses in which teaching to the test can indeed be harmful: excessive preparation that focuses more on the format of the test and test-taking techniques than on the subject matter, and the reallocation of classroom time from subjects on which students are not tested (often art and physical education) to those on which they are (often reading and mathematics)" (Phelps, 2011), he uncovers one of the most damaging aspects of teaching to the test. As an aspiring teacher who hopes to manage my own classroom of students in the near future, the thought of being forced to neglect abstract subjects like art and music in favor of leading strictly exam-based sessions is disconcerting to say the least.
Another article that attempts to objectively analyze the issue of teaching to the test is Learning About Teaching: Initial Findings from the Measures of Effective Teaching Program, which was released by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation in conjunction with their Measures of Effective Teaching initiative. Designed to study the impact of standards-based educational practices on students as well as teachers, this program enlisted Harvard professor Thomas J. Kane to oversee an array of rigorous research studies which gauged the effectiveness of teaching to the test by estimating the value added to student achievement by instructor involvement. The analysis put forth by Kane and his colleagues is nuanced and balanced, based largely on "an intensive study of 3,000 teachers across the country using multiple types of performance measures, ranging from test scores to sophisticated observation tools and student and parent surveys' (Kane, 2010). Much of the article focuses on the relationship between a teacher's efficacy and the typically random distribution of advanced students…
