Testing and Assessment: What is Happening in Education?

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When the results of the "Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS)" came out, US politicians and bureaucrats were appalled at the implied inferiority of US students, and by further implication, the inferiority of US teachers, and US Education generally.  (This is typical of the culture: the well-known fact that American kids were coming out of school not knowing very much did not alarm people until it was demonstrated that Japanese kids were showing our kids up in international tests.)

In the early years of this century, following some excitement in the nineties, politicians began clamoring for the hides of school teachers.  A heap of tests of students at various grade levels was mandated by the States and by the Federal Government.  Obviously, these tests were indirectly tests of the teachers.

This same culture of trying to get data of education outcomes has been gaining ground in colleges as well.  Are students really learning what the colleges claim they're learning?  So now in colleges, too, we have furious testing going on, with a view to estimating the efficiency of professors (and, to be honest, the overall curriculum, and how it is connected together).

Honestly, it is a sort of Consumer's Reports approach to education that was inevitable; it was bound to happen.  The Government will now step in and say that unless colleges can prove that they're successful at teaching students what they need to know, they will have to re-think student financial aid, the non-profit status of colleges, and soon we will be hounding college professors as much as we hound schoolteachers.

In my (oft-repeated) humble opinion, hounding teachers does not have a good result.  Teachers will tend to teach less and less, and teach it more carefully.  Students will start doing better and better in a narrower set of skills (e.g. "I can really do addition and multiplication and spelling good, but grammar and subtraction I can't do at all.")

On one hand, it seems unreasonable to give teachers carte blanche on what and how to teach.  On the other hand, interfering with the teaching process does lead to contradictions that are impossible to resolve.

Let's agree on one thing: teachers always do brilliantly with highly motivated, intelligent students.  As long as we stay with students who are interested in a particular subject, teachers and students make progress like a couple of houses on fire.  But when universal education enters the picture, the trouble starts.  The Public want teachers to teach all students a little of everything, despite the fact that the vast majority of teachers are reluctant to teach a large class of reluctant students.  Make no mistake: I am not in favor of reserving the highest wisdom for the deserving few.  There is a subtle difference between elitism, and recognition that without motivation, learning and teaching is impossibly difficult.  Today teachers are required to motivate the unmotivatable student, which even the gods cannot do with 100% success.

So we have a problem.  The public feels that it has a right to information about how successful a teacher (or a school, or a program) is, but the very act of obtaining that information interferes with the very thing it is measuring.  There is a sort of Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle operating here.

Note:
A consumer approach to education is what resulted in all these Online Courses and For Profit Universities all over the country, with designer majors.  The majors advertized were on the lines of Engineering of Video Games, Fashion Swimsuit Design, etc.  Unfortunately, many of these schools have found that their graduates do not do well in the employment marketplace, and are unable to pay their student loans.

Why is this?  Young people who refuse to entertain the possibility of taking any course unless it is directly required in his or her major are likely to be impatient with a large number of skills and requirements that make them generally useful as employees.  In a depressed economy where one might not be able to find a job that fits one's (possibly very narrow) interests, it is necessary that one has a broader training that allows one to keep body and soul together doing something that is remunerative, but possibly not very inspiring.

But these broad skills are provided by traditional Liberal Arts schools.  Once these schools are pushed through the wringer of accountability, few of them will survive, and the boutique-major schools will have to take up the slack with education that most students will not be able to use.

But that's free enterprise.  Someone will surely provide a good education for reasonable cost, right?  Surely it is a niche market that someone could fill?  Sure.  Just until you assess the crap out of the place.

Tomorrow: Answers!  Just kidding; I have no answers.