Teaching Standardized Testing Content Without ‘Teaching to the Test’

Student performance on standardized tests, like the ACT or SAT, is being used increasingly, to decide important issues about school funding, accreditation and teacher employment and certification. These high-stakes tests define educational outcomes within a district. To that end, districts have mandated that curriculum address content that students will encounter on the test. However, “teaching to the test” has been faulted, as it limits the role of teacher to that of remedial test coach.

Teachers find themselves in a double bind. With limited hours in the teaching day, teachers face a critical choice. On one hand, school funding imperatives say to get student test scores up at all costs. On the other hand, too much attention on tests, diminishes teacher integrity and leaves little time for non-test content.

Theoretically, this dilemma should not exist. Educational testing wisdom says that a test should not be remedial or instructional. Teaching through testing is not an effective way to educate. A good test should only assess what a student already knows, (pre-testing) or what they have learned (post-testing). Tests should be the culmination of everything a student needs to successful completion of a prescribed course of study, similar to a bar exam or national licensing certification test.Tests should correlate with textbooks and reflect content taught in the classroom material.

The ideal is not the norm, sadly. Standardized tests questions are often fragmented and irrelevant to classwork. Textbooks aren’t uniform within a state or district, or even within an individual school. Standardized tests do not connect to any one textbook series; they often have no basis whatever in classroom content. If standardized tests don’t connect with commercial packaged curriculum, they connect even less with district-specific or teacher-made curriculum.

It’s not just a matter of teaching the three R’s anymore, either. Schools are being required, by state and federal law, to address an ever more diverse scope of content. Increasingly, schools are taking on responsibilities not normally within an educational purview: custodial needs, health and wellness initiatives, mental health concerns, bullying prevention, medical issues, transportation needs, fitness mandates, extended daycare and mountains of additional paperwork.

Schools are being held accountable for student care for an ever-lengthening period of time, too. In times past, when the school day ended, students went home. With more parent pick-up, schools have had to adopt more complicated dismissal and arrival systems. They’ve had to do it with fewer staff members, too.

Funding cuts mean schools have had to reduced support staff: lunch and playground attendants, maintenance technicians, custodians, school nurses. The secretary must usually act as school nurse, even though she may have no specific training. Teachers clean their own classrooms, on top of their teaching duties. Janitors must double as maintenance or lunch room staff. Most all school staffers wear too many hats.

Logically, it would seem that unifying the curriculum with content packages would solve the teach-to-test dilemma. That takes away from teacher creativity and individuality, however. It makes for very canned education and turns the teacher into nothing more than a paper pusher. No, the larger problem that needs attention is that we have to stop tagging so much to high stakes testing and start making public education a higher priority.


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