The Trouble with Testing

by

Rae Pica

Experts assert that standardized testing makes little sense for children below fourth grade. Despite this, the politicians and policy makers still pound podiums in their righteous insistence that “more testing” is what we need for accountability in classrooms. As a result, even preschoolers are expected to sit still and provide evidence of their knowledge.

The problem here is twofold: first, young children should not be expected to sit still for the length of time it takes to complete one of these tests. And, second, young children are very much still developing their communication skills. How can we expect them to fully communicate their understanding of something?

Moreover, we have to wonder how we can require children to communicate their understanding of that which is beyond their power to understand. Patricia Stevens, an early childhood administrator with a Head Start program in Midland, Texas, was the first to have to administer new formal tests to the four-year-olds in Head Start. The tests, of course, were verbal rather than written, but this seemed to be the only concession made to the children’s age. Not only were these little ones expected to be able to interpret graphs (a skill requiring highly developed logical/mathematical and visual/spatial intelligences), but they were also supposed to be able to describe a swamp. That would be challenging for anyone of any age (what are the right words to describe a swamp?), but it was especially challenging for these children, because they lived in Midland, Texas – a place so dry that swamps don’t exist. How, then, were its youngest residents to describe something they likely had never come across in their lives?

Patricia told me that these tests she was required to administer twice a year were so stressful that the children cried as they took place. They were so stressful, in fact, that she hired substitutes to give them, because she didn’t want the children to associate these awful experiences with their regular teachers. And Patricia’s students weren’t alone. The stress they underwent every fall and spring was representative of what is increasingly experienced by young children who are forced to endure standardized testing and curriculums.

As evidence, an Alliance for Childhood report cites mounting cases of school-related stress among young children, including more accounts of “kindergarten rage.” Standardized testing has also given rise to increasing rates of “test anxiety” and, along with all the other stressors present in children’s lives today, has caused the brains of many preschoolers to now resemble the brains of stressed adults, with excess levels of cortisol and adrenaline, the chemicals responsible for the body’s fight-or-flight reaction. Children under stress are far less likely to do well on test. In fact, brain research shows that high levels of stress impair learning.

Although the claim is that standardized tests determine a person’s potential – for later success in school/college and in life – their actual ability to do so has been “awful,” according to Peter Sacks, author of Standardized Minds: The High Price of America’s Testing Culture and What We Can Do to Change It. As one example, he points to the fact that women perform consistently worse on college entrance exams than men, yet women consistently surpass men in their actual performance in college. Sack says the “poor ability of the exams to tell us much about later performance has been true for people who score well on standardized tests and those who do not.”

And what about the ability of standardized tests to measure intelligence?

Intelligence doesn’t involve the mere accumulation of information. Intelligence involves knowing how to acquire information you don’t yet possess and, most importantly, knowing how to use it once you’ve got it. In fact, there is a statistical link between high scores on standardized tests and what is considered “shallow” thinking. Too often, those who score well are simply good at memorizing or at guessing which multiple-choice answers should be marked. Standardized tests do not require the understanding, creative thinking, analysis, synthesis, or application of information that are the hallmarks of in-depth thinking.

In reality, we’ve been testing for decades in this country, and doing so hasn’t done a thing to improve our children’s education. But still we keep testing – to greater and greater extents. It reminds me of something I once read: that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.

Rae Pica is a children’s physical activity specialist and the author of A Running Start: How Play, Physical Activity, and Free Time Create a Successful Child (from which this article is excerpted). Read more of what she has to say at her blog, The Pica Perspective, and hear her interviews with experts in the fields of education, child development, play research, the neurosciences, and more at www.bodymindandchild.com.