Understanding the Issues: Education

[saden1]

Originally Posted by Schneed10

Yeah I think I gotcha. You're saying that the SATs force teachers/schools to gear their teaching styles towards the test.

I'm not sure that's a bad thing. I happen to love the SAT and think it's a great measure. It combines good probing questions with the need to perform under pressure (time limit). I think you need a degree of standardization in schools all across the land. After all, all students are headed to the same real world and job market, aren't they?

The SATs are a funny animal though - those who did well on them tend to like them. Those who didn't... not so much.

It's definitely a bad thing if you talk to teachers. I had the opportunity to speak with a middle school teacher/principle a few weeks ago and he said they're just training the children to take the test. No critical think necessary. When teachers don't believe in what they are doing how can they possibly do a good job?

SAT is a total different beast, it's a collage aptitude test. Teachers can do some prep-work to prepare students for the test but they don't base their curriculum on the test.

[firstdown]

Originally Posted by saden1

It's definitely a bad thing if you talk to teachers. I had the opportunity to speak with a middle school teacher/principle a few weeks ago and he said they're just training the children to take the test. No critical think necessary. When teachers don't believe in what they are doing how can they possibly do a good job?

SAT is a total different beast, it's a collage aptitude test. Teachers can do some prep-work to prepare students for the test but they don't base their curriculum on the test.

While I agree teachers get stuck teaching to the test isn't it the basic stuff kids nee to know?

[onlydarksets]

Originally Posted by firstdown

While I agree teachers get stuck teaching to the test isn't it the basic stuff kids nee to know?

Not really. Teaching to the test is helping the kids figure out how to pick the right answer, as opposed to teaching them the fundamentals that allow them to understand why the answer they chose was correct. The former skill becomes useless when the test is over, while the latter is a base for the next year's education. Skipping the base leaves you with pretty much nothing.

Watch season 4 of the Wire. It may be hyperbole (or maybe not), but it highlights the problem.

[Schneed10]

Originally Posted by onlydarksets

Not really. Teaching to the test is helping the kids figure out how to pick the right answer, as opposed to teaching them the fundamentals that allow them to understand why the answer they chose was correct. The former skill becomes useless when the test is over, while the latter is a base for the next year's education. Skipping the base leaves you with pretty much nothing.

Watch season 4 of the Wire. It may be hyperbole (or maybe not), but it highlights the problem.

I agree that the emphasis placed on the standardized testing probably, to a degree, distracts from the subject matter that should be the main focus of teachers and students. But teaching to the test still has value. It teaches kids how to analyze the question, how to logically think through the possibilities and use process of elimination to narrow it down, to understand when they're overthinking vs when they're trusting their instincts, etcetera.

These tests, and teaching to them, certainly results in downtick in creative thinking. But logical and analytical thinking gets a lot of focus. I don't see it as a bad thing for kids on the whole.

Besides, you can use process of elimination all you want on a multiple choice standardized test, but in the end if you can't eliminate more than a couple answers, you don't know the underlying material well enough anyway. I do think there's an appropriate balance being struck.