Rationalamerican: Accountability In The Classroom

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Accountability In the Classroom

Last edited May, 2005, Lat reviewed September 2007

You've heard it a thousand times before: "We need to hold schools and teachers accountable for what goes on in the classroom, and standardized testing is the best tool we have for objectively measuring performance". You've heard it so many times it almost sounds true. Almost.

Sometimes a simple analogy can make clear what would otherwise take hours of study. Let us suppose you are in the market for a used minivan for use on weekend trips for your family. You want something inexpensive, but reliability is key because your family will be belted into this vehicle. You have located two minivans for consideration. Both are the same brand, the same year and both have about the same mileage.

Minivan "A" has just been through an official inspection by your state and it passed with a sticker good for two years. That is all you know about this vehicle, however. Minivan "B" has not recently been through a state inspection. However, the owner has an extensive history on the vehicle, backed up by receipts and paper records. The oil was changed every 3000 miles. The brakes were replaced 5000 miles ago. The tires are one year old. The exhaust system is original and getting a little ragged, but a mechanic has recently been through it and the owner has the estimate to fix it. You have these records and more, plus the phone number of the owner's mechanic.

Which minivan will you purchase for your family? For many the answer is obvious. The state inspection merely measures a series of safety and environmental factors at one point in time. Nearly everyone knows a story about someone who went through a state inspection successfully only to have the vehicle brakes or lights or some other item fail the next week. The state inspection is merely a standardized production line that gives inspectors a cursory look at the vehicle. The results are questionable at best. Minivan "A" is really an unknown. It passed inspection, but who really knows what is under the hood?

Minivan "B", on the other hand, is a known quantity. The records are there for examination and the mechanic is available for questioning. The vehicle history gives a much more accurate and much more complete picture of the vehicle condition. A recent state inspection would really add nothing to the picture.

Standardized tests are the equivalent of minivan "A". They take a static snapshot of the performance of a child on a test at one point in time. That performance is then "normed", or compared against many other test-takers, and a percentile score is produced. You know how your child ranks compared to other children taking the test, but you don't know if those other children are high performers or low performers. In short, you really know nothing meaningful. What is going through your child's head before, during or after the test is anybody's guess based on a percentile test score. Some children, like some cars, may take tests very well. Some may not.

Child-centered, developmentally appropriate measurements are Minivan "B". For example, the student portfolio system, a continuing series of individualized evaluations recorded by teachers over time, show progress right there in black and white. Student portfolios are not, as some may believe, simply a folder stuffed with schoolwork. Implemented correctly, portfolios are a rigorous and systematic evaluation process running through the entire school year and even through each child's time in school. Students are repeatedly assessed on an individual basis by teachers for a long list of specific developmental milestones. The literacy portfolio, for example, will include writing samples, various verbal and written assessments for sight words, spelling and comprehension given individually, running records of a child's performance while reading out loud, and more. Portfolios exist for other subjects too.

The portfolio system, which has been implemented in American schools right on up to high school, is such an outstanding tool because it evaluates a child as an individual and it follows each child throughout the whole year. Unlike high-stakes standardized testing, a single day of feeling under the weather will not produce a wildly inaccurate test score under the portfolio system. Plus, a picture of the entire school can be had by randomly and anonymously pulling a few portfolios from each classroom for review.

What is more, quizzes and tests of objective facts over the course of a school year can indicate growth in knowledge. Notes and comments recorded by parents and teachers point out the specific concerns of those who feed and care for the child. With such information in front of a parent or teacher, what more would a standardized test normed against many thousands of strangers really add to the picture?

Probably nothing. Standardized testing can, however, add significant costs to the education of children, detract from available teaching and individualized assessment time, cause younger children to become upset, cause older children to become despondent, cause the tracking of students into inappropriate programs based on a couple hours of filling in bubbles, and cause parents and teachers to miss the entire forest for the one single test-score tree in front of them. Which car would you purchase?

The real truth is that the push for increased testing usually comes from politicians and administrators who have something to gain, such as votes, or a pumped up resume. How many times have you seen ordinary parents outside a school picketing and shouting for increased testing? The push for "accountability" is really about those with an axe to grind. It is about those who seek to show how schools are failing or how they will improve school performance; measured, of course, by further testing. If you are a parent, ask yourself this simple question: do you know how your own child is performing in class?

That brings us to the crux of the matter. Children are individuals. They are not cogs on an educational wheel and they are not members of a collective school team competing against other schools. As a parent, you are concerned with the intellectual, social, emotional and physical growth and well being of your child. If you know through your own knowledge and through the knowledge of your child's teacher that she is performing to the best of her abilities, why would you care how your child compares in taking a standardized test one day that is normed against many thousands of other strangers? Unless you are caught up in the race for "accountability", you probably don't care.

Instead of needlessly worrying about meaningless scores, isn't it more important for your child that you be concerned about his or her individual growth? Many child experts think so. There are numerous assessment systems designed specifically to record and evaluate a child's individual progress in the classroom. Isn't that what matters?

To cite this article:

Painter, John. Accountability In The Classroom. (May 2005). Retrieved month x, 2xxx, from

<http://rationalamerican.com/education>