The Irony of Standardized Testing.

Those of you who attended the State of the School address will have heard my strong opinions about standardized curricula and standardized testing. I firmly believe that schools need to concentrate on much higher orders of thinking than repetition and regurgitation, and rather than standardized curricula we should be promoting creativity, collaboration and entrepreneurialism.

You may even remember the phrase I used:

“We tend to value what can easily be measured rather than finding ways to measure what we truly value.”

Perhaps Einstein said it more eloquently:

“ Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted”

I was delighted to be able to attend a presentation by Dr. Yong Zhao last week who validated my concerns about standardized education going as far as to call the ideology “dangerously irrelevant.”

American government and media seems to be obsessed with standardized test results as a measure of educational quality, even going as far as to develop standardized curricula to ensure that students do well in standardized tests. They point to the international mathematics test results (TIMMS) as an indicator of how poor American-style education is compared to other countries such as China, India and Korea. They present this as justification for a move towards more standardized education and test preparation. As Dr. Zhao points out, such results are dangerously irrelevant.

The irony is that as fast as the USA seems to want to move its public education system towards standardized education and testing to do well on such international benchmarks, those countries that historically do well (China and India) have already realized the importance of moving in completely the opposite direction.

Here is what they seem to have realized:

TIMMS results have no correlation what so ever with the success of a country. Indeed, there is a completely negative correlation between TIMMS results (and other international benchmarks) and GDP per capita. Countries with high GDP per capita are usually more creative and entrepreneurial. Those countries like China and India, who do well in TIMMS results, tend to have strong manufacturing bases.

This is my exact point. Standardized education and testing is perfect for repetitive, industrial, manufacturing societies. To be really successful in the 21^st Century takes creativity, open and lateral thinking and an entrepreneurial sprit. This is almost the exact opposite of a standardized system.

Historically, the most successful superpowers have been able to use all of their diverse talents to the full. When you standardize your education system, you lose the ‘diversity of talents’.

China and India have already realized this and in an effort to increase their GDP per capita are already completely re-organizing their education systems to be more like how they perceive the American system to be.

As fast as China and India are trying to be less standardized and more creative in their educational systems, it seems that America is doing exactly the opposite.

It is indeed a bitter irony.

Fortunately, such government educational initiatives do not apply to independent schools. Rest assured that Riverstone will continue to focus on what really matters. Your children will be taught to be creative, to collaborate, to compete and to be open-minded thinkers.

Hopefully they will continue to do well on standardized tests even though they are a poor measure of what really counts.

Indeed to paraphrase  Dr. Zhao, such curricula and test are “dangerously irrelevant.”

Andrew Derry

For more informationm on Dr Zhao: click here