Episode 8: The Faulty Promise of Tests

All right. I have a 17 year old son who is a rising senior in South Carolina. And my concerns about testing are that it's going to be a little bit harder to differentiate himself from others without that testing. I don't know if he doesn't have a strong volunteer component because he plays a lot of sports. So he's either on the field or in the classroom or studying mostly. So he doesn't have those other components that might set them apart from others. So that's one of my concerns. My other concern is I don't really understand if the schools say that they're test optional, are they really test optional? We keep getting a lot of conflicting information. Some say, yes, test optional, we won't even look at them. Others say, well, it is test optional, but if you don't send us your test scores, then you will be at a disadvantage to students that have higher test scores.

Hi, I'm Diane Tavner.

And I'm Michael Horn. Thanks again for joining us for Class Disrupted. Diane is I've been on webinars and phone calls with high school parents across the country. I'm hearing a lot from parents like this one who are worried about what college admissions might look like now that the SAT isn't in play in the way that it once was. So many schools are going test optional and now that, let's face it, nothing is in play like it once was.

Honestly, Michael, I'm really grateful that tests like the SAT are in play because it gives us an opportunity to take a hard look at the why behind them and really unpack that, just like we did last week in our episode about grades. I want to ask some of the same questions about tests and not just the sat, but the standardized tests we use all the time in so many of our classes and grades and schools like why are we so reliant on them? Are they the best way to serve our kids? And at this point, I don't think it's going to be a surprise to anyone that I feel strongly there's a better way. And I think you do too.

And so perhaps that's not surprising either. I do indeed. But I would go so far as to say that I don't necessarily think the issue is with the tests per se. I'd probably say that I think they are important even in some cases. But the problem in my mind is how the tests are administered and how decoupled from learning they are. In K12 schools. It's like the tests are symptom of a greater problem because Just. Just think about how we've used them. We use them to sort students out of potential pathways. We close doors off to opportunities through tests, and we do all these things for which the tests were honestly never designed to do. And using that, the tests in that way, it equates to some really disastrous outcomes for kids.

What you're speaking to, Michael, are very real problems with standardized tests. As a country, we talk about how we want to educate all kids, and in fact, we put a bunch of these standardized tests in place so that we could literally leave no child left behind. But honestly, that just doesn't ring true. For so long now, we've been using these tests to close doors for kids. And people get that. They understand that it's part of it is a selection problem. We're only selecting for one thing. It's super narrow and it doesn't actually tell us very much. It's like, I think of it like it would be like if we went to a court or a jury trial. And it's like hearing one piece of evidence in a trial and then making a ruling based completely on that one piece of evidence. And you know, what happens is that we end up leaving all these other kids behind. And it might be a different story if we value the entire array of skills, knowledge and passion that every person brings to the world. And we had ways of helping them select into a good fit pathway for them. But that's just not how our standardized tests are being used.

You're totally right. It's. We've used them in incredibly narrow ways, and we test a very narrow band of skills and knowledge and things of that nature. But because testing has become so important, it's put a lot of pressure on our K12 system to focus on them. And in my mind, schools haven't generally done so in a very productive way. They've often narrowed the curriculum, which is honestly against what the research would suggest you should do to improve learning and subsequently raise scores. And all too often, Diane, they've taken the joy out of learning.

You know, Michael, we often talk about how you. You value what you test and you test what you value. And so I think that's what we're getting at here. I mean, to your point, sadly, it's not even what the research says that people are doing here. Most people, when they think about how they're going to get better on these test, they're just doing what's familiar to them. You know, if kids aren't doing well on tests, we need to remediate them. We need to give them another worksheet. We need to try to really cram that information in their head. You know, Larry talked about this in our second episode, if you remember when he was like, oh, the textbook companies get really good at giving you precise worksheets to test the exact question that. So kids can get better on it. And when we do that, we lose sight of so many important things. We lose sight of developing every person and we're not offering them options. And you know, Todd Rose put this so well when we talked to him and he said so much that we didn't even include this bit. So I'm really excited that we get to bring it back now and hear a little bit more wisdom from him.

Picasso would never have gotten to Stanford's visual arts program unless he had fantastic SAT scores, which is really absurd. You know what I mean? It's like you're not looking for talent of the broadest kind. You're not looking for allowing kids to show what they care about, are good at. You're literally saying dance the way we're telling you to dance. And then we pretend that we. It's just, it's awful, right? And then kids get in. Same thing happens again, only now it's on your dime. And so throughout the system, there's a handful of things that really never show up. One is actually accepting that the kids individuality matters. There's nothing about trying to equip them with more autonomy and agency and the ability to have more self direction and we just don't. That's not the focus. Right. And we're not really trying to cultivate human potential of the broadest kind. Right. We're still stuck in this idea that there's only a limited number of spots. Let's try and find the fairest way to figure out the kids that deserve it.

So, Diane, I remember not just Todd talking about how the system sorts and narrows options for students and all that, but I also remember how enthusiastic he was about what he saw as a chance for change. And this is where I come in some optimism too. I'm actually really excited, Diane, that testing has been so thoroughly disrupted because it's like we've been forced into a timeout and like other impacts of the pandemic, it's given us an opportunity to pause, to reflect, and now hopefully to innovate. My great worry though, even as I have all that optimism, is that schools treat this as a one year problem because sure, they can come up with solutions for this year for applicants like the rising senior at the top of this episode, right? Like colleges have actually figured out for years how to evaluate applications from homeschool students, from international students, so they will come up with a fix. Not to dismiss parents who are worried about this right now, but this is a very solvable problem, not just this year, but for the next many years. But if schools only look at this through the prism of just getting through next year, in my mind it's a missed opportunity because then we just go back to a system that actually doesn't serve any of us, least of all kids.

Michael, like you, I'm optimistic and I'm thinking about building bridges to the future we want and not those peers into the ocean. And, you know, we're in a place right now where we just don't have the test scores we've gotten used to and we've been relying on for years. And that's not just at the college level, but really all through K12. And so we're really out of our comfort zone. And I love being out of our comfort zone because I think it gives us a chance to do something different. You know, what if we took this moment to start engaging with students as the individuals they are, as full human beings opposed to widgets in an industrial model that we created a century ago. Because, Michael, if we do that well, if we develop kids as individuals and if we see them that way, the selection process doesn't become that big of a deal because kids will make the selection decisions themselves. They will have the freedom to say, this is what I want to do. I know myself, I know myself well. I know what the options are for me. I know what I'm good at and I'm going to go after that and I'll be a good fit for it.

It's such an important point because it really flips the paradigm of selection on its head. Right? And what you're really talking about here is what would truly be a student centered approach. And I think it's important to hear from some of the students themselves about what their experiences have been like over the past few months to remind us of what they've gone through and, and also to capture how they're feeling about returning to school.

I was in third grade when the schools closed down. At school, I don't know, I just had a lot of fun. Like some people feel differently at school. Some people, school isn't their favorite. But with me, I really liked school. All the sports closed too. I just started baseball practice. My team was really good and then it just got cancelled. For maybe next summer. We don't quite know yet what's gonna happen, like how we're gonna eat lunch or how big the classes are gonna be. So we just have to wait for now. I don't know. It's just strange. Right now. Everything's strange. Well, the first time it was announced, everyone in the class cheered except for me because they all thought it would be like a vacation. But I was pretty worried. The teachers have been providing online work that doesn't feel productive to me in that it's not self explanatory and like a computer can't be a teacher. If we go back in the fall, I think it's a very risky move. A thousand students can't be controlled by only a few teachers. Even if everyone's saying keep your mask on and keep distance. Kids have missed each other and will be hugging each other and doing unsanitary things. The first two weeks we didn't have anything. We didn't really have zoom meetings. We didn't have anything. And then the teachers talked and kind of started to give us more work. And it was really interesting because like, some teachers gave us a lot of stuff and some gave us nothing. And I think it's gonna impact like how much we know about different classes and just how much we know overall, because I feel like it's a big year of like learning freshman year. And I feel that a lot of it was taken away. It's been pretty overwhelming and it feels kind of weird because you're just at home and there's so much going on outside of just coronavirus and it's hard to just be like you can't do a lot. I definitely expected to be out of school because all of the teachers were preparing for it. They told us that we probably weren't going to come back. But it was also really sad though, because you don't really realize what it's like to be distanced from your classmates until it actually happens. It's going to be very weird for my class because we all just finished our freshman year. So it's going to be for friends that you have that you don't spend 24 hours a day with. It's going to take a little bit to reconnect with each other and just feel natural again. I didn't know that I'd been leaving school. They just said two weeks and I was just like, well, it's not fun exactly, but I mean, it's not that bad. But then I realized that it was going to be longer than I expected. And then it's the whole year, and we just don't know what's gonna happen next year. But I felt like it was really hard, and I feel really scared when something new happens and my parents are all like, oh, something's bad. Happens, and we have to break to her. But I know that they are struggling just as much as me. 20 years from now, I'm gonna tell my kids, oh, I was. Yeah, I was. I survived coronavirus, and it was really hard. And so if you're whining, then just know that I've been through a lot, and I was just in third grade.

Wow, Michael. You know, I get so excited when we talk to kids. I love hearing from the kids. I know this is only a small sampling and that many kids have been through much worse since March, and we should not forget that, and we should really hold that really close. But it's still pretty clear from these kids that there's been a lot of upheaval in their worlds.

Right. And just imagine, though, put yourselves back in their shoes. You're getting pretty much ousted from your school building overnight. You're torn away from your friends. First they say, oh, it'll just be for a couple weeks, and then it's a few months, and then it's the rest of the year. And then you've experienced all this really confusing, haphazard learning that we've talked about on this podcast while schools scrambled to figure out how to teach you in ways that they were totally unprepared for.

And then there's all this confusion about grades. And then, you know, some people are tossing them out, some people are getting A's. It's caused kids to really rethink what learning is all about. And then not having access to learning, in some cases at all, it really caused them to miss it in surprising ways. And, you know, that may not have been what people expected.

Yeah, I think that's right. And it also looks different, obviously, depending on the age of the student. There's, you know, because we're obviously also in under incredible stress as a nation right now. And even if you tried to avoid the headlines, you really couldn't, except if you were in the youngest of years. Right. Because it's not just about what life looks like right now with the pandemic and all the news surrounding that, but there's also this great moment of civil unrest and, I would say, awakening right now in the country. And while certainly many children have been aware of inequities and racism their whole lives, There are a lot who I'm imagining are just waking up to it. And many, I suspect, are losing faith in systems that they've always taken for granted.

I mean, I think that's right. Michael it's like the perfect storm. There's the pandemic and the sheltering. There is this financial crisis from so much loss. There is incredible fear and unrest in our communities of color. And quite frankly, across the country, there's so much going on. And so even if kids do get to go back to school in the fall, they've got all of that. And then school is not going to look the same. It is going to look really different. And you know, young kids will understand that. And sadly, what most districts are talking about right now doing is as soon as they get the kids back into the building, giving them a standardized test to figure out how much learning they lost. And let's just think about that from the perspective of a student for a minute. So I've had all this stuff happen. I'm dealing with all this stuff. I get back in the building and like you're going to give me a test. What does that say to me about how you feel about me and how you see me? I mean, the science would just never bear this out as a good idea. Michael Tests are threatening under the best circumstances. And to introduce greater fear and threats to our kids when they walk back on our campus is just. It's unconscionable.

Yeah. And so it's clear that when you think about it from the students perspective, how off putting it would be in the best of cases and how deeply unsettling and threatening it would be in many others. But I also imagine that you've thought a lot about this from the teacher's perspective. Diana.

Oh my gosh, absolutely. Like the teacher experience is so close to my heart. It's what we're working on and thinking about every day. And just imagine, now you're a teacher, so you've missed your kids so much, you're excited to be back with them, but you're really nervous. Like there's a huge focus on keeping them safe and you safe and everyone safe. You know, we're all getting used to the proper protocols and social distancing and wearing masks and washing our hands constantly and maybe taking temperatures at the door. I mean, this is a huge job that no one is used to. And you know, it feels like as educators we now take on this role, this new role of like vigilant safety officer or something. And some of us are wondering if we're even going to get a chance, chance to teach. And so it's not easy for any of the people in the building and in the school environment. It's, it's going to be super restrictive. And so there's a fundamental change in how we're going to engage with each other at school. And the first thing you're going to do is give kids a test. Okay. And then as a teacher, I'm like, why did I do that? The district's going to take these scores. I don't know when I'll see them. What am I supposed to do with that information? Because my kids come back tomorrow and it's going to be highly politicized and there's going to be all these headlines like, how is that helpful?

Yeah. So look, a lot of this seems daunting, right? But we have to ask ourselves as a country, as states, districts, communities, what's our goal? Right? Like step back and go to that first principle, sort of what's our goal here? Is it to write about, tweet about, fight about how badly we failed our kids over the last many months? Or is it to do something about it? And more importantly, to empower the students themselves to do something about it? Because what we really want is to take a learner centered approach that gives them the tools to own that learning process.

Exactly. Michael, you asked me about the teacher perspective, and so let me just tell you what my instinct is as a teacher when I come back. I want to build connection with my kids. I want them to know that I care about them and that I miss them and that we're in this together. I want to tell them that none of us have the answers and we're going to be doing things that none of us have ever imagined doing. And in order for us to have those conversations, I can't be having them sit at their desk and taking standardized tests. I need to actually be engaging with them. I need to really absorb the, the learning science about what it takes to build a trusting connection between human beings. And, you know, I think this is something that most teachers are really good at. It's what they do intuitively. It's why they got into teaching. And if we give them the space and the encouragement to do it, I think they're going to follow their instincts.

Yeah. So that, so I think, let's state it right, that first thing you do, build connection and relationship. So instead of confronting kids with what inevitably will feel like a test of how far behind they are, the teacher could talk to their students and not en masse either.

Right. And then we spend time acknowledging how different this experience of school really is and talking about how people are going to be afraid for their health. It feels scary when people are taking your temperature and there are all these new rules to follow. And so we actually have to build a community around it to ask, what are we doing here together? Why would we risk our health to be here? Why would we be careful in this community? How can we trust each other?

This is such an important point. I want to jump in here, Diane, with the parent perspective, because it's, it's so critical to the conversations we're having in my household right now because I'm really worried as the parent of two five and a half year old, that if they go to school and they're constantly told what they cannot do, we're going to build a generation of kids who are just afraid of things. And I don't want their teachers to have to become hugging police, blowing the whistle whenever kids get too close, reprimanding them for trying to build connection. And I think we can take a much more positive spin here and reframe it around the opportunity here to take care of each other. This is now how we do this and the possibilities of what, as a group of humans working together, we can accomplish together, not what we're no longer allowed to do.

Michael, we haven't had such a strong rallying cry for collective purpose probably since Sputnik. I mean, doing the right thing can be a positive experience as opposed to a negative one. But kids didn't need to. They need to understand why they, they care about the why. This is what people don't realize about kids. They care about the why. Why. This goes back to us needing to trust them and empower them and give them real answers.

Yeah, I think you're right. And if people want to recall what it feels like to have five year olds, that's why they're always asking why. So with that all said, as the first two steps, if you will, what would you do next?

Well, for me, Michael, again, I just come back to this idea of trust. Instead of telling them, you know, we're going to give you a test because we know you've lost learning, I would ask them, you know, what do you feel like you need to learn or want to learn? You know, what do you feel like has happened for you? Where are you? What do you feel like you may have missed and what are your goals? Kids will be much more motivated and interested if they're Working towards something that they want to do and that they believe in versus something someone else is to trying told them, oh, you've missed that, or you don't know that, or you lost all of this. You know, that is such a deficit perspective and it just doesn't motivate people. I mean, the science is super clear about this. And so, you know, we need to think about how you'd feel if you were told these things. I mean, you. I know, I know.

I rebel against it, right? I mean, it's like accus. It's like accusatory, right. It'd be terrible.

It's almost like you want to. I know you. You'd want to prove me wrong, right? It's almost like you'd be like, no, I didn't lose anything. And that's just a natural human reaction. And so I think what I would do is I would want to connect with them and try to help them with their goals. And so, you know, we would go, We've talked a lot about this on this podcast. The cycle of setting a goal and making a plan. So I would use that approach. I, as a teacher need to have a map of where I want them to be going and I need to be. Be helping them make those connections and making sure, you know, I'm checking that, that they're getting to what they need, but I first just need to really trust that they're going to want to do that from the. For themselves.

All right, so let me try to synthesize this a bit, Diane, because you've covered a lot of ground, but it also seems like we have four clear steps in front of us. Okay, so step one is building relationships and those connections. Step two I'd summarize as coming together around a sense of. Of purpose with this new school reality, reframing it from a negative to a positive. The third thing, if I'm hearing you right, is understanding students goals, their own sense of what they need right now at this point in their lives and what they want. And then the fourth step that you're starting to talk about is where the teacher connects the students goals to what's important from the perspective of the curriculum. Is that about right?

Totally. Michael, you've got it.

All right, awesome. So then I think we need to address the elephant in the room here, if you will, because I imagine a lot of teachers and parents will be listening to this and thinking, okay, sure, maybe that works for an independent school with small class sizes or maybe for kindergarten or maybe even first grade. But how do you do this if you're anything but that. Right. And it occurred to me as I was listening to you talk about these four things, that the podcast up to this point has actually already addressed the how. So I think it'd be helpful to connect those dots for our listeners, just to really feel a few examples of what doing these four things would look like.

I agree, Michael. And look, we've heard it again and again from experts and from students and from teachers how important connection and a sense of community is. And, you know, that part doesn't have to be hard. You can, can build community in a group in a space of an hour. You can build a shared purpose by kids sitting in a circle, even a socially distanced circle, Michael, and doing a check in. And there's some very simple protocols that groups all around the world use for this. It's really possible.

Yeah. I mean, we see it in schools all around. Right. And for some reason, though I will confess that even as you're saying that, and I know it, it's possible, I do also have in my mind, like the busy chemistry teacher, for example, I don't know why we keep going back to chemistry here and pushing on your button there, but, you know, that teacher sees at least 150 students in the course of the day, and she feels like she has to start delivering content from day one because, you know, she has this curriculum guide, right? She's got to get through all this subject matter. And so for someone like her, I'd actually say that this is an opportunity to simply flip the classroom, which we talked a little bit about in the first and second episodes, and spend a little bit of time in the classroom in that conversation with small groups or one on one, and take the stress off the delivery, if you will, of content.

Michael. I think that is true. And I think the other point to really emphasize here is that you have to go slow to go fast sometimes. And it's really tempting to feel like, oh my gosh, we've lost so much time. I don't know how we're going to make it up. We've got to dive right in. We've got, we can't lose another minute, you know, but what I would say to that chemistry teacher is unless you actually help those kids feel safe and invested and connected, they're not going to learn anything. And I won't get wonky on you here, but there's all these big fancy science words and whatnot that tell us very clearly that kids who are in a state of fear and worry and anxiety, they don't learn. You're not going to get any chemistry in their heads.

Yeah, I mean, it makes sense, right? If you're in a fight or flight mode, how are you going to be receptive to learning? And. But hearing you talk, it also brings up to mind something else, which this seems like a big opportunity actually for us to question the sheer breadth of what's covered in classes and how we feel like we have to get a concept almost every other day in the school year down. And we could really slim it down at this point. Not just in high school chemistry, but all the way down to the elementary school. School. Like, do elementary schoolers really need to learn the life cycle of a butterfly at a specific time during the year? And yes, that's on my mind because my kids are focusing on that right now at home. But no, like, they don't necessarily need that particular piece of content right now. Right. Yes, they do need to learn to read and they, they want to learn to read, by the way. Right. Rare is the student who doesn't want to learn how to read and open this entire world for him or her. But focus there, because then the chances are that they'll, they'll pick up a book about the life cycle of a butterfly one day. Or you can build that into a lesson or text or something that you give them later. You don't have to rush to make sure you get that in there. There are other ways that that child will pick that up if it's important.

You're absolutely right, Michael. Go slow, to go fast. We can't say it enough. I mean, let's stick with this reading example for just a moment. And because I think it offers us an example of how you can do two things with one. And so we've talked about how there's a need to figure out where kids are, what they know, what they don't know. Teachers need to have that information. Well, instead of giving second graders a standardized test to check their reading, what lots of schools already do, and sort of a gold standard for reading assessment that we often don't do because we think it takes too much time is to actually have the teacher sit with the child and do reading and assess them. And what you can do in 10 minutes even is so powerful. There's so much information you can get from that. And oh, by the way, look at that, Michael. You're doing the reading assessment and the teacher one to one connection. Right. the same time, it feels like if I'm a student, someone's Listening to me, they care about me, they see me, they know me.

Yeah, it's, it's such an important point because I think testing doesn't need to be seen in this deeply impersonal way that alienates or makes someone feel bad. Now, with that all said, like, let's talk about steps three and four, right? So there's the goal setting, step three, and then the connection to the broader curriculum in step four. And it seems to me that this is where the learning cycle that we've talked about the so many times at this point in this podcast series comes in. You know, having the student set a goal, make a plan, learn, of course, and execute that plan, show what they know. And that's the testing part, we can call it out, but it's in the, it's in this cycle of learning because then they reflect on that performance and they set another goal and make another plan and continue to go round and round.

Exactly, Michael. And what I love here is that we're bringing everything together, together, because that cycle is best accomplished through a project that builds in the habits of success. And projects are kind of like a three for one, because they also help build students connection with one another and with the teacher as they work together. And if school gets interrupted again, which is highly likely, students who are engaged in a project don't need the school to tell them what to do. They've got their project, they've got their sense of purpose. I'm not suggesting that schools completely turn into project based learning schools overnight, but they can start small with one well crafted, meaningful project. And you know, I personally have this dream that like, we as a country build a project around the virus. Like, what if every school opened with such. There's so many interesting things here, so many scientists, specific concepts, so many ethical dilemmas, so much fine. I mean, we could build the most interesting, engaging projects that help kids develop real helpful knowledge that would help them understand the why of what's happening in their schools and be bought in as part of the solution.

I think it's such an important point because it really connects to that second step. Right? And so now we've interwoven this in, in everything we've done because it's building that connection and it's building that why, it's building that caring and turning all these things that could be seen as a negative into a positive. And then there's the digital access aspect of this and the tools that we talked so much about in that episode with Larry Berger, which would be so key to this Right, because they'd be using those tools to gain the knowledge and insight that would in turn help them to build their. Their solutions for these projects that they're tackling.

MICHAEL the digital piece here is essential, and it's one of the reasons we started with that foundational piece in the podcast. Like, from day one, schools need to make sure that kids have access to technology and a personalized program that helps them build their math skills and their literacy skills and meets them where they are and does embedded assessment while they're learning. Teachers can use those resources, results. Students can use those results, parents can use those results. You know, that is so much more powerful because when you get that result, you get right back to work, as opposed to having some standardized tests that who knows when you get the results, and if you can read them, when you get them, you know, the tools are out there.

Michael yeah, it's. It's absolutely right. And look, we should, we, we will acknowledge schools unquestionably have their work cut out for them this summer. There is still a lot of uncertainty and so forth. But amidst all this uncertainty, amidst this pause that we talked about at the beginning of the podcast, it's such a great opportunity. And look, we've done this before. As a nation, we've risen to the occasion of a rapidly changing world. That's how the industrial model came about in the first place. And so we can start to build the bridges in education again to meet society's current needs. And in my opinion, it's imperative that we do so. So with that, thanks again for joining us on Class Disrupted, and we'll see you next time. Thanks for listening, and thanks to our awesome crew making this all work. Jenna Free, our writer, Steve Chigaris, our producer, and Nathan James helping us with publicity and graphics. We'll see you next time on Classic Disrupted.