How do you know if your child is in a great school? Is he/she learning anything? Does he/she enjoy going to school? Does he/she feel ? Is he/she being challenged?听 Is he/she being well-cared for? Does he/she have opportunities to develop special skills and talents, as well as explore personal听special interests? Is he/she happy?
How about his/her classroom? Is it vibrant? Is the teacher engaging, uplifting, and foster听a love of learning听in the classroom?听Is there a variety of resources available? Does the school possess听strong leadership and ?
How would you get answers to these questions? You could go to the school, walk the hallways, visit your child鈥檚 classroom, talk with teachers and administrators, see a lesson being given, talk with other parents, and lastly, maybe check the Internet.
Most parents don鈥檛 have the time or inclination to do this amount of research. Most of what parents learn about their child鈥檚 educational progress comes from standardized test scores.
Standardized听Testing听Doesn鈥檛 Measure Educational听Quality
But notice there was no question above about how your child is doing on tests. That鈥檚 because new research is suggesting that standardized testing will measure maybe 20% of all the things that make school a great learning experience.
Testing tells you nothing about the values described above. It only tells you how well your child may have done on specific tests after specific test preparation by your child鈥檚 teacher.
And what happens if the test scores in your child鈥檚 school are low? Pressure gets applied to the school to raise the scores. This pressure gets passed on to the teachers, and they must now do a better job of preparing the children for the next round of tests.
This testing charade cycle could lead to what has been called a of the teaching process, a measurement event that does not measure real improvement for schools and does not improve teaching practices.
Standardized testing leads to repetitive, boring practice rounds and repetitive instruction. It鈥檚 a step backward in the creative process.
What has to happen in this case, and to solve low testing in any school, is to change the teaching practices. Real learning occurs slowly for most students, much slower than tests reveal. Improvement is traditionally inflated so school systems can show they are getting better and can keep their funding and accreditation.
What Standardized Tests Don鈥檛 Measure
Even if test scores were legitimately high, standardized tests would not reveal all the value the school provides, nor reflect everything听the school does to effectively foster a healthy听learning environment in meeting students鈥� unique听educational needs.
Standardized test scores don鈥檛 tell you about school culture as a whole 鈥� the level of engagement, the resources, the citizenship, the teacher level of commitment and creativity, the level of care, the safety, the opportunities to explore interests, or the social and emotional health and support that鈥檚 an integral part听of students鈥櫶齟veryday learning environment.
And tests don鈥檛 tell you if your child is happy and confident.
Some new research shows that high standardized test score growth can actually be correlated with low levels of听. Standardized tests tell us very little about what we actually value in schools.
A school may be good in one area or another, but it is not necessarily good in all areas. Those schools that are good in most of them 鈥� can be considered approaching the 鈥済reatness鈥� goal.
School Quality Based on Academic Reputation
On a larger scale, one good school does not mean that all schools are good. We make that kind of assumption all the time. We say 鈥淚t鈥檚 a good school system.鈥� But that may not be the case. The policies may be similar, but the teachers are different, the children are different, the parents are different, and the administrators are different. All schools are not uniformly good or bad.
Discussions crop up throughout communities about which schools appear to be good. The talk about school quality can get distorted. Parents really don鈥檛 know enough about the schools and all they encompass to make valid judgments about value.
Parents also make judgments about where to live and what schools to send their children to. Schools with more affluent student families tend to produce higher test scores and are perceived as being 鈥済ood.鈥� Parents seek them out, choosing them over schools with more diverse student bodies.
Improved Framework for Measuring School听Performance
The first thing for interested educators and concerned parents to do is to have a of what they want their schools to do. They should use the same clear language for articulating aims and more valid metrics for tracking progress.
A clear framework of educational and developmental goals would establish common ground for richer discussions and would recognize the multi-dimensionality of schools.
Once goals are established as to what鈥檚 important, then the instruments of measurement can be developed. The metrics should be aligned with the goals. These metrics should come from a variety of sources, like performance measurements embedded in the curriculum, from school districts that have more information than any one school, from surveys of students and teachers, and more.
The goals should be realistic and achievable and recognize that learning is a steady process. Unrealistically high goals lead to invalid testing to justify those goals.
Too-high goals also lead to what has been called 鈥済aming鈥� where educators try to cheat the system by short-changing students just to get those higher scores by spending an inordinate amount of time and effort on test preparation rather than on the process of learning.
What should be measured are the things that make schools great, the things that matter. One researcher suggests they should include student achievement (that goes far beyond what is measured by standardized tests), the quality of educators鈥� practices, and the school鈥檚 climate.
Tests should not be goals, and should not generate pressure to get better scores. They should be used wisely to improve educational practices.
Teachers should be given the support they need to change and improve teaching methods. Parents and administrators should not demand improvement without providing the necessary support as well as recognition of contributions.
Any new methods or strategies should be monitored, evaluated, and changed if needed, much like automotive or other product innovations are tested before being released to consumers. Fully tested practices should be released to all schools.
To make your child鈥檚 school great, get involved by talking with your child, with teachers and administrators about what you like and what you think can be improved. Be specific and carry examples of what you mean. Make constructive suggestions. Have . Join with other interested parents. You can play a large part in making your child鈥檚 school great.
