We hear a lot about standardized tests these days and how many public school kids are performing badly on them, but how many adults would score well on them? One father and school board member of a large U.S. school district decided to find out.
The Washington Post reported Monday that the school board member, a father of five with two grandchildren, has a high-paying job and multiple college degrees (including a bachelors degree, two masters degrees and most of the credits needed for a doctorate degree).
Still, after taking the 10th grade standardized reading and math tests, he said:
“The math section had 60 questions. I knew the answers to none of them, but managed to guess ten out of the 60 correctly. On the reading test, I got 62% . In our system, that’s a “D”, and would get me a mandatory assignment to a double block of reading instruction."
He went on to say:
“I help oversee an organization with 22,000 employees and a $3 billion operations and capital budget, and am able to make sense of complex data related to those responsibilities.
I have a wide circle of friends in various professions. Since taking the test, I’ve detailed its contents as best I can to many of them, particularly the math section, which does more than its share of shoving students in our system out of school and on to the street. Not a single one of them said that the math I described was necessary in their profession.
It might be argued that I’ve been out of school too long, that if I’d actually been in the 10th grade prior to taking the test, the material would have been fresh. But doesn’t that miss the point? A test that can determine a student’s future life chances should surely relate in some practical way to the requirements of life. I can’t see how that could possibly be true of the test I took.
If I’d been required to take those two tests when I was a 10th grader, my life would almost certainly have been very different. I’d have been told I wasn’t ‘college material,’ would probably have believed it, and looked for work appropriate for the level of ability that the test said I had."
In summary, he told the Post:
“I can’t escape the conclusion that decisions about the [state test] in particular and standardized tests in general are being made by individuals who lack perspective and aren’t really accountable.”
The man has since identified himself and provided details about his education and career:
The man in question is Rick Roach, who is in his fourth four-year term representing District 3 on the Board of Education in Orange County, Fl., a public school system with 180,000 students. Roach took a version of the Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test, commonly known as the FCAT, earlier this year.
Roach, the father of five children and grandfather of two, was a teacher, counselor and coach in Orange County for 14 years. He was first elected to the board in 1998 and has been reelected three times. A resident of Orange County for three decades, he has a bachelor of science degree in education and two masters degrees: in education and educational psychology. He has trained over 18,000 educators in classroom management and course delivery skills in six eastern states over the last 25 years.
Some educational bloggers have jumped on the story and responded that Roach probably would have scored much better if he had taken the tests when he was in 10th grade.
Perhaps.
But if the things we are exhaustingly testing our children on are that disposable, that unnecessary, that quickly forgotten even during the course of college degrees and intellectually stimulating work, what good are they?
Considering the lessons these tests are giving our children -- that many of them are dumb and doomed to fail -- does anybody think they're really worth it?
Do homeschoolers have to take standardized tests?
Laws vary by state, but here in Minnesota homeschooled students must take an annual standardized test during all years of compulsory education (ages 7-16). Parents may choose the test but it must be a national recognized, norm referenced test such as the California Achievement Test. The Peabody Test is one alternative test that many students prefer. See the links below for more information.
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