As usual, Perry is leading the cow to pasture and creating an system where faculty will need to teach to a standardized test and not to discovery of knowledge. Years of standardized testing has led the public education system in K-12 as one of the worst in the Nation. As related in the article, stardardized tests do not work as a measurement of knowledge, just a measurement of an exam responses. Measurements need to measure outcome of concept and content without putting a strangle hold on academic freedom as Perry is suggesting.

Wayne Brock, at 7:20 am EST on February 2, 2007

This is a wonderful announcement. Since traditional assessments==exams, papers, etc.—are not considered valid indicators of a student’s subject knowledge I conclude it will no longer be necessary to assign grades in my classes. The only truly important class will be the ETS subject exam prep class.

Sam, at 8:10 am EST on February 2, 2007

Oh, yeah ..

” .. Measurements need to measure outcome of concept and content ..”

Does that include accurate spelling, grammar, and math? How holistically graded?

Is 2+2=(4+1-1) sufficient? Or is flying to Houston from Austin via Dallas OK, vs. Houston to Dallas?

Like, y’know, ESPN is visiting campus this weekend .. have a lot of things to do. Pick up the keg, work on Facebook, take a nap, get some geek’s textbook notes ..

I mean, like really .. like a final-final exam? No way ..

C. Bigsby, at 8:25 am EST on February 2, 2007

Back to the future all over again in Texas. Backdoor coalition between politicians and testing firms makes end run around everybody seriously involved in education. Result? No different than already has happened in the schools: invalid mandatory testing tied to state appropriations that will result in an entrepreneurial glut of test-related products, an academic stampede to create test-preparatory classes, and a press rush to publish comparative numbers without any discussion of their validity. Final result? Suffering of institutions that serve minority and place-bound students, and further decline of real learning in Texas. Next step? State-funded graduate programs? Texas state legislature? The Texas Governor’s office?

Rich Haswell, Haas Professor Emeritus at Texas A&M University, Corpus Christi, at 9:41 am EST on February 2, 2007

Understatement

When Dr. Paredes apparently observed that “some faculty” may have issues with standardized testing, he was demonstrating a marvelous gift for understatement. I teach at an open admissions school in deep South Texas; we have many fine students, and they can and should be able to compete head to head with students from other regions of the state. That said, the pervasive climate of misguided fear that standardized testing has led to in our secondary schools has no place in “higher education” (which begins to sound suspiciously like “military intelligence” in terms of its descriptive powers). Worse, the childishly simplistic insistence on comparing graduation rates between lavishly funded institutions like the University of Texas at Austin or Dallas and border schools like the University of Texas at Brownsville or the University of Texas Pan American can only continue to exacerbate the neo-colonialist approach that our state continues to take to its southern border. No child left behind indeed! Tell that to our thousands of part-time students struggling to make ends meet while trying to get by on what financial aid they can find, simulutaneously working one or more jobs and trying to find classes in understaffed and underfunded institutions. If this state wants to get serious about addressing problems in higher education, it needs to start on the border rather than creating political placebos to placate the wealthy regions of the state.

Bill Harris, Professor at Univ. of Texas at Brownsville, at 9:45 am EST on February 2, 2007

Abolish tests?

Texas and many other jurisdictions require standardized tests for a wide variety of professional licenses. The ostensible object is to protect the public from unqualified practitioners. For example, Texas lawyers must pass a bar exam. Our electricians, our real estate agents, insurance agents, school teachers and motorists of all types must pass standardized tests of their own. There are also national jurisdictions who require standardized tests for licenses. To get a pilot’s license I had to pass a standardized test and to get my professional licenses I had to pass eight standardized tests in succession. Even that was only the beginning since they also require me to take continuing education verified by standardized tests every two years.

If standardized tests are not valid measures of knowledge, then all those tests we take to be permitted to engage in all these fields of activity are just a waste of time, money and effort. They are screening out otherwise qualified people and therefore should no longer be required. I can’t foresee that, since most of us would not put our lives in the hands of an unlicensed airplane pilot and the lawyers would defend to the death their monopoly on access to the courts through professional licensing.

Therefore, if the colleges want to educate their student properly, they should teach them that standardized tests are going to be required of them in many fields of endeavor as they go through life. If the tests are invalid, the colleges should show how to improve them since they are highly unlikely to be abolished.

Jack Olson, at 10:01 am EST on February 2, 2007

Little Boxes

http://ingeb.org/songs/littlebo.html

Little boxes on the hillside, Little boxes made of ticky-tacky, Little boxes, little boxes, Little boxes, all the same. There’s a green one and a pink one And a blue one and a yellow one And they’re all made out of ticky-tackyAnd they all look just the same.

And the people in the houses All go to the university, And they all get put in boxes, Little boxes, all the same. And there’s doctors and there’s lawyers And business executives, And they’re all made out of ticky-tackyAnd they all look just the same.

James, at 11:35 am EST on February 2, 2007

Testing the Legislature

Having spent 12 years in Texas Community Colleges and 21 years in the Office of the Registrar at UT-Austin I have seen lots of changes in higher education in Texas and in the U.S. These comments are come from the perspective of those experiences.

Gov. Perry’s proposal is a broad based attempt to improve higher education in Texas. The comments I see are reactions to specific portions of the proposal, mostly testing. From a broad perspective, it appears there is much to be applauded in this proposal. Certainly the spirit of it is an attempt to increase funding for higher educational institutions and students attending those institution. That is something that has been missing for some time now and is certainly positive for students.

Are there strings attached? Certainly, as I would expect there to be for any financial consideration given. You would expect the same if you were in the position of the legislature and probably do as a taxpayer.Are they the right strings? I’m not so sure about that and think it deserves a robust and honest discussion.

The problem posed is one of keeping Texas competitive in a global economy. The solutions proposed are from a mindset that reflect standard approaches to remaining competitive from business perspective. I think that works...to a certain extent. To illustrate the point lets look at the legislature.

How do we judge legislative success? Is there a set of standardized tests we can apply to measure how much they learned in their tenure? How do we know they are staying competitive as legislators in a global economy?

Certainly voting and staying elected is a measure but what does it measure and has it been validated as to whether it is measuring the correct information? Should there be an entrance test to determine whether a legislator has a minimum level of skills and to use as a benchmark so when they exit the legislature we can test them to measure what they learned? Should we set a quota for legislation they sponsored and passed and reward them on that basis? Should there be a formula that measures how they use space?

Legislators are certainly under public scrutiny for what they say and do and they are held accountable. Would they support similar measures that required budgetary transparency?

I don’t know the answer to these questions and don’t really want to waste time talking about the legislature. I do think it illustrates the difficulties with testing what students learn during the course of their education. You can measure knowledge within a subject area, and should require it for professions. I’m not so sure it works well for measuring what keeps us competitive in a global marketplace or what makes good citizens.

I applaud the spirit of Gov. Perry’s proposal and urge people to offer better approaches to keeping Texas competitive in a global environment.

Mike Allen, Associate Registrar at University of Texas at Austin, at 11:35 am EST on February 2, 2007

If students would be able to graduate irrelevant of test scores, why should they take these proposed tests seriously??

Robin, at 11:35 am EST on February 2, 2007

New Test Requirements

Even though I am involved with the standardized testing programs at my university, I still feel that requiring graduating students to take yet another exam is ridiculous. Students, of all ages, are almost tested to death throughout their education, public schools through higher education. This seems to be an unnecessary evaluation of their college learning and an additional unnecessary expense to their already expensive higher education. If a student can take and pass the required courses for a particular degree, why must they be subjected to another test. I think that the TAKS test has proved that teachers being “encouraged” to teach to the test in order for the school district to receive more money, has taught us that our children are not getting a quality education. They are being taught how to pass the TAKS test, with some school districts even going to point of helping their students cheat in order to make their school districts look good. Why would we want to do this in higher education. Isn’t it more important that our students get a quality education than to get it drilled into their heads about how to pass this graduation test? Evaluation should be done through the individual classes and by the faculty member in those classes.

Terri Harvey, Testing Coordinator at Sam Houston State University, at 11:35 am EST on February 2, 2007

Please provide sources for Moon and Ignite!!

I am wondering if you could please share your sources for Sun Myung Moon’s involvement with standardized testing for Higher Education and Ignite! (which has the ring of a Moon organization just by the name). I’ve been following the antics of this individual with both the religious right and the Bush Administration since he was proclaimed the “Messiah” and “King of the United States” (which in Unification church terminology is the “Second Israel") in our own Dirksen Senate Offices three years ago (3/24/2004). I though I knew of most of the more important of his 1600 front organizations (like his abstinence sex education program Free Teens USA), but Moon tends to work in the shadows and through intermediary organizations so I can see how I missed this. References from credible sources would be appreciated.

John

John F. Defelice, Associate Professor of History at University of Maine at Prsque Isle, at 11:50 am EST on February 2, 2007

For a number of reasons (none of them valid) we use the MFAT for graduating seniors at Yeshiva. It is, to put it mildly, a disaster. Not only do our students do poorly — i.e. our top student a few years ago nearly flunked it, but the kind of material the American History one (I can’t vouch for the European one) covers is seriously out of date — lots of constitutional and diplomatic material. In short, the MFATs measure nothing that we want our students to learn and simply add to ETS’s bottom line.

Ellen Schrecker, Professor of History at Yeshiva University, at 1:30 pm EST on February 2, 2007

Keep talking ...

People like to focus on standardized testing and my guess is that it is because it’s a simple target. But why focus on that?

I don’t think Gov. Perry will reject writing test. Didn’t ACT and SAT all have them now? Taking one step further, we may be able to have computer simulated test, say, brain surgery via a simulated robot since the day of using surgery robot isn’t that far away. I will say this counted as testing skill.

Why create anther test? Well. Just like you can’t really count on the quality of our high school graduates. If all HS graduates are taking the test, the employer will have a easier time of finding out who to hire and in turn students will know zipping through our K12 system doesn’t mean a dime and realize that the real world is out there. It is a way to motivate our students and have them take up more responsibilities. We can bring hay to the cow but you can’t make them eat.

Can value and attitudes be measured? I guess you need first define what is a good attitude.

Since the final value is what employer is looking for, I think it’s more realistic to measure the final product instead of the added value. Should employer pay for some of the cost? I think they should. But someone will have to devise the mechanism.

Duncan, at 2:10 pm EST on February 2, 2007

This “teaching to the test” canard now seems the favored weapon of the (union-inspired) crowd struggling mightily to discredit accountability in the K-12 public school system, with the bipartisan No Child Left Behind Law the chief object of their fear and loathing.

If “teaching to the test” is in fact possible — then why do SAT scores fail to please in the first place? Wouldn’t teachers have grasped the connection, if one actually existed, and thereby spared their profession much criticism and legislative attention?

Ron Goodden, at 2:25 pm EST on February 2, 2007

What are taxpayers getting for their money?

Newsflash: private-sector employers give “exams” all the time. Some formal (e.g., basic skills, new products). Some informal (observing).

If someone’s precious little darlings are too feeble to endure exams — why are they in college? Why should taxpayers — a majority of whom are NOT directly involved with higher ed — subsidize their alleged educations? Why are they not back in K-12?

What is the anti-testing community afraid of? That the king will be discovered to have no clothes? That they are “the man behind the curtain?” Willy Loman would have had a field day with this.

B.D., at 2:55 pm EST on February 2, 2007

Knowledge vs. higher function abilities

What many proponents of standardized testing don’t bother to address (or perhaps even realize) is that this type of exam is concerned with the lowest level of thinking — pure knowledge- black and white facts about a subject. We watch game shows on TV and are impressed when people can answer questions to subjects about which we may know nothing. This is NOT a matter of intelligence however- merely a measure of how good a memory one has for facts. In elementary schools this type of teaching seems most appropriate as there are many basic rules and facts needed by young children before they can begin functioning at higher levels of thought. True intelligence is developed by taking this knowledge base as a starting point and applying higher level reasoning to problem solve, make assumptions, ask questions, analyze, evaluate and criticize. THESE are the higher level brain functions that are never being reached by many of our younger students because they’re so busy memorizing facts to regurgitate on a test. Simple fact and comprehension tests may be appropriate for elementary schools but at some point a transition to higher level thinking must be made if we want people who can cope and operate under many different conditions that may not have been covered in their text books. Jr High and High school used to be the transition point for this type of learning. Standardized testing has extended the time our students are stuck “learning facts” and delayed their higher development. As a college professor, I expect incoming students to have had at least some exposure to these higher levels of thinking. Instead, incoming Freshmen are generally handicapped when asked to do creative writing, analyze a problem, see patterns, work without constant guidance or display any number of other critical types of thinking. The answer to this dilemma? Higher level functioning needs to be stressed and much earlier. If a legislative branch is going to make such outlandish demands of the educational system, I would suggest (as another reader did) that they hold themselves to the same standards. Are they making these demands of our colleges because they really think it is best for the students or is it because of the lobbyists for the standardized test companies? or some other non-educational reason? Standardized testing has too long hindered our children and extending it to the college level is a travesty of the first order.

Todd Graber, at 3:50 pm EST on February 2, 2007

Logical?

How does this — ” .. Are they making these demands of our colleges .. because of the lobbyists for the standardized test companies?”

.. follow this ” .. While Wynne said he was surprised by the news about Texas on Thursday ..”

Paranoia means never having to be alone.

B.D., at 6:15 pm EST on February 2, 2007

FYI: Asians take exams

Someone please explain this —

” .. Now that we can see what destroyed General Motors and Ford, we are using the very same techniques of mania for numbers to destroy every institution in America ..”

— given GM and Ford studied intensely the numbers-based Toyota Production System (TPS).

http://harvardbusinessonline.hbsp...IJJYZUQYAKRGWCB5VQBKE0YOISW?id=99509

If numbers are so bad — why didn’t Toyota fail?

Was it all the exams required to enter the University of Tokyo?

Nah — TOY workers just watched a lot of ESPN, drank and partied a lot, conned the Public School Monopoly and their parents that exams and standards are not needed. Stuff like that. No hard work or discipline required.

C. Bigsby, at 6:30 pm EST on February 2, 2007

re: The GRE and Learning

“For starters, there are plenty of majors that don’t lead to licensure exams and that ETS doesn’t include in its major tests. ETS tests history but not philosophy, music but not art, sociology but not anthropology, and literature in English but not literature in other languages. Paredes said that other tests would need to be identified, or perhaps students might take other admissions tests, such as the Graduate Record Exam or the Law School Admission Test.”

The problem here is that the GRE subject exam I took had virtually nothing to do with the skills necessary for a doctoral program in English literature, and it did not in any way test how well my undergraduate institution (McGill University) had taught me. That would have required looking at my writing to see how well I could do research, whether I had mastered to some degree literary theory, if I had the capacity to master the appropriate secondary sources and come up with an original thesis. All the GRE tested was whether I could distinguish between a quote from Hemingway and a quote from Joyce. In several instances, all it tested was whether I had looked at some of the practice exams. My point is simple: an objective (read: multiple choice) does not accurately reflect what one has learned over the course of an undergraduate education. All it tests, as many have pointed out, is whether one is good at taking tests.

Peter C. Herman, Prof. at SDSU, at 10:35 pm EST on February 2, 2007

Overdetermination and fairness in funding

I suspect that giving out funding based on both graduation rates and scores on tests is an implicitly overdetermined system—graduation rates and test scores are measures of the same thing, student ability before ever entering the university, meaning the universities who win the funding sweepstakes will do so with no correlation to what occurred to students on their campuses. (It’s kind of like being paid for getting a government contract, rather than for completing it, isn’t it?)

UT-Austin is rewarded for selective admissions when only graduation measures are taken into account.If funding is to be fair, some additional variables need to be introduced at the beginning of college education so that a measurement of the amount of learning that has taken place is possible. Community colleges and less-well- known schools should be rewarded for admitting students with weaker skills if those students learn anything; UT- Austin, conversely, would be penalized at the admissions end for trying to avoid having to teach anything by only admitting students capable of completing the syllabus on their own without assistance, but they would still be rewarded at the exit end for having had those students.

At base, if funding is to be given out according to learning, what is known at entrance must be measured in some way and subtracted from what is known at the end. The schools with the best reputations will still do well, as they get more of the students who come in with well-developed study skills, who should learn more in a given amount of time, but the gap produced by only assessing who got the best students to begin with should be narrowed by considering measurable academic knowledge at the beginning.

All this said, I’m not a supporter of standardized testing in higher education. If it is to be used to determine funding, though, it should be used honestly. Using only exit measurements to measure something to be named “learning” or “acquired knowledge” is not at all honest in my opinion.

Thane Doss, Tokyo

As for U. Tokyo, once admitted to a Japanese university, graduation is pretty much guaranteed, as long as one doesn’t die or withdraw. U. Tokyo (a public university—privates are where you go if you can’t get into a good public) gets the best students and assures the pathways to the best jobs. That said, U. Tokyo students do seem to me (a purely subjective assessment, wkith no assurance of validity) to learn more than students at other respected universities. The place you really find out who’s really good and who isn’t, though, is in graduate school or in the first few years at work. Because it’s so easy to coast in university here, those who work hard can pass by a considerable number of those who entered with higher scores but coasted afterwards.

Thane Doss, Yomiuri Culture Centers, at 11:05 am EST on February 3, 2007

Lets keep talking...

It seems the anti-testing allies like to talk about the thinkings and had centered their oppositions in the easy target of the standardized test and labeled the pro-testing allies ‘proponents of standardized testing’.

However, I really don’t see that people advocate for testing are advocate for standardized test.

So. I think what we need now is for the anti-testing allies to clarify how they measure their bright students and, hopefully in a consistent way. I hope the answer is not that there is no consistent way of measuring since they do assign their students differentiated grades.

Few notes:1. Albert Einstein is really not a good example. He may not know the year of the second world war, but he sure know electrons are much lighter than protons. Does this make him less a thinker? I don’t think so.

2. Personally, I wouldn’t call the SAT test a test of facts. It may not test a student’s creativities but it can test student’s analysis abilities. With creative thinkings, you can create questions other than asking the year of the event.

Duncan, at 11:06 am EST on February 3, 2007

Asian exams useless?

Wow .. this — U.S. students don’t need ” .. hard work or discipline ..”

Prior to this — “U. Tokyo students do seem .. to learn more ..”

.. must mean Toyota over-taking Ford in market position, millions of laid-off U.S. auto industry workers and Michigan in near-bankruptcy, and reports of Tokyo U. dominance in Japan are just mass illusions.

Gee — sorry. Let’s bring back “The Great Society” and raise taxes.

C. Bigsby, at 1:51 pm EST on February 4, 2007