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<\/a><\/p>\nIsabel is a senior at Lennard High School in Hillsborough County Public Schools, and a member of my AP Calculus AB course. In the process of writing her a recommendation letter, I reviewed her student summary: a list of her scores on all the district, state, and national exams she\u2019s taken in her first three years of high school.<\/p>\n
I counted 63 exams. That\u2019s 40 district exams, six community college exams, nine state level exams, six national exams, two AP exams\u2026 and a partridge in a pear tree.<\/p>\n
She\u2019s not alone. A study released over the weekend by the Council of the Great City Schools showed that students in big-city school districts will take roughly 112 standardized tests by the time they graduate from high school.<\/p>\n
I\u2019m a math teacher. I love data\u2014and I need it to teach well. Tests can and should be a key way for me to find out whether my students are actually learning what I\u2019m trying to teach them. But I think we can all agree that the number of tests we\u2019re talking about here is too high, and I\u2019m glad the Obama administration has pledged to tackle the problem. I disagree, however, with the administration\u2019s proposal that we cap testing at two percent of instructional time. If we\u2019re serious about fixing testing, we can\u2019t start by focusing on a particular quota for how much time we\u2019re allowed to spend on it. Instead, I\u2019m much more concerned with figuring out which tests are actually useful to us, and which ones aren\u2019t\u2014and going from there.<\/p>\n
Let me explain what I mean. Formative and summative assessments occur every day in my classroom. They provide concrete data on my students\u2019 performance, and my own. I complete an item analysis on quizzes and tests to identify trends in student performance by standard, and adjust my instruction based on what my students are learning.<\/p>\n
And when my students receive a graded test, they immediately join their classmates in making corrections\u2014learning from their mistakes and filling in the gaps in their knowledge. The learning experience of an assessment is what makes it useful to me and my students, and it\u2019s what I want them to focus on even more than the grade they\u2019ve earned.<\/p>\n
The problem is, far too few standardized tests provide this critical learning experience for teachers and students. Of the 63 assessments Isabel has taken, less than ten have provided her or her teachers with anything other than a final grade. And results from many of them weren\u2019t available for weeks or even months\u2014too late to have any real impact on teaching and learning. In other words, most of these tests were not time well spent.<\/p>\n
How can we ensure that the tests we give our students support their learning process, rather than take time away from it? Sure, some of Isabel\u2019s 63 exams might be duplicative, or unnecessary. We can and should get rid of those. But it\u2019s also possible that some of those tests could be useful if we had access to better and more timely data from them.<\/p>\n
That\u2019s particularly true for tests required by individual school districts, which represent the biggest chunk of tests Isabel and other students take (even though state- and federally-mandated tests get most of the attention). Right now, many of these district-level exams only tell us how many students missed each question\u2014not which individual students, which means I can\u2019t use that data to provide truly differentiated instruction. And while some of these tests do collect data that would help me target instruction to meet students\u2019 needs, the process for accessing that data is incredibly convoluted and time-consuming\u2014far beyond what even the most dedicated (and tech-savvy) teachers can manage in their busy schedules.<\/p>\n
Teachers need to be encouraged to use data to inform their instruction, which means useful data must be readily accessible to us. The technology exists to give us near-immediate results and opportunities to personalize each student\u2019s learning plan. In particular, teachers need score reports with breakdowns of students\u2019 performance by individual standards, and analytical support to be able to interpret the data they\u2019re seeing. If Isabel did poorly on, say, MA.912.C.1.12\u2014\u201cunderstand and use the Intermediate Value Theorem on a function over a closed interval\u201d\u2014I need to know right away, so I can discuss the concept with her and provide resources to improve her knowledge. This data can also help students embrace assessments as an integral part of the learning process.<\/p>\n
As the Obama administration and others look to improve standardized testing, I hope they\u2019ll do more than just search for a magic number of tests that\u2019s \u201cjust right.\u201d Instead, let\u2019s figure out which tests are actually useful\u2014or could be, given the right changes\u2014and get rid of those that aren\u2019t doing the job.<\/p>\n
Kelly Zunkiewicz is a 2014 Fishman Prize winner and a member of the TNTP Educator Editorial Board.<\/i><\/p>\n