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The most menacing aspect of #StandardizedTesting is the way it trains kids to fear making mistakes by labeling & shaming. Misunderstandings should be opportunities for breakthroughs in comprehension, but the tests teach that miscalculations are perverse transgressions.
Playwright Oscar Wilde made a magnificent observation in his novel "The Picture of Dorian Gray" when he wrote, “Most people die of a sort of creeping common sense, and discover when it is too late that the only things one never regrets are one’s mistakes.”
Oscar Wilde understood that creativity cannot exist without mistakes, & without creativity life lacks meaning. Kids live in fear of getting low test scores because they are used to label & shame at best—& sometimes carry extreme high stakes (closing schools, denying graduation).
The central contradiction of #StandardizedTesting—an incongruity propelling the revolt against these tests forward today—is that knowledge is a social phenomenon, yet high-stakes testing attempts to organize our society to deny this fact by individualizing scores.
Lev Vygotsky, known the “Mozart of psychology” for his influential work in child and adolescent psychology and cognition, described mental development as a “sociohistorical” process both for the human species and for individuals as they develop.
To explain the interplay between the social and individual aspects of knowledge, Vygotsky developed the concept of the “zone of proximal development,” the difference between what a learner can do without help and what they can do with assistance.
#StandardizedTesting, by focusing solely on what a student can do as an individual (absent the peers and educators who have made the learning process possible), completely rejects the importance of assessing what students can do collaboratively.
The long running “rugged individualism” narrative in America--exacerbated by neoliberalism--is taught to students by having them compete with each other in school through tests and grades. This helps disguise the power of collective action, which is needed to change the world.
A true education is about discovering what you can do in concert w/ others. That’s why standardized tests, which only measure a very narrow amount of what an individual can do, are too puny an instrument to assess the power of education.
We need authentic assessments, designed to assess critical thinking and what a student can do in collaboration w/ others. Performance assessments achieve this and are used w/ great success in innovative schools like this network: http://www.performanceassessment.org/
The average student today takes an astonishing 112 standardized tests in during their time in the K-12 school system. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/answer-sheet/wp/2015/10/24/confirmed-standardized-testing-has-taken-over-our-schools-but-whos-to-blame/
Instead of a tool to assist teachers in assessing students, standardized tests have become an end in & of themselves. When any test becomes the goal of education, meaningful learning ceases and education is replaced by what I call a “ #testucation.”
A #testucation has many advantages over an education from the perspective of the #testocracy. An education invites students to question and critique, which can lead to a populace that asks dangerous questions, such as, “Why is the #testocracy is in control of education?”
A #testucation polices what is acceptable knowledge, leaving elites to determine what questions are asked. Training children to believe that wisdom is the ability to choose a right answer from a prescribed list, allows the testocracy to set the parameters acceptable knowledge.
A #testucation is rooted in white supremacy. Standardized tests entered schools in the early 1900s at the urging of eugenicists whose pseudoscience proclaimed white males naturally smarter. The tests have always measured proximity to wealth & whiteness—not intelligence or ability
You can learn more about how standardized testing is rooted in eugenics and white supremacy and perpetuates racism today from these articles:
1) https://rethinkingschools.org/articles/racial-justice-is-not-a-choice/
2) https://progressive.org/public-school-shakedown/six-reasons-opt-movement-good-students-parents-color/
3) https://rethinkingschools.org/articles/the-forgotten-history-of-eugenics/
4) https://progressive.org/public-school-shakedown/covid-testing-not-standardized-testing-hagopian-210224/
1) https://rethinkingschools.org/articles/racial-justice-is-not-a-choice/
2) https://progressive.org/public-school-shakedown/six-reasons-opt-movement-good-students-parents-color/
3) https://rethinkingschools.org/articles/the-forgotten-history-of-eugenics/
4) https://progressive.org/public-school-shakedown/covid-testing-not-standardized-testing-hagopian-210224/
We face major crises in our world today; a global pandemic killing millions; record wealth inequality; police violence; white supremacists attacks; 1 in 4 women report having been sexually assaulted. Homophobia & transphobia. Climate change threatens the future of humanity!
Our nation has sunk billions of dollars into organizing education around the idea that the highest form of knowledge is the ability to eliminate wrong answer choices. Yet none of the social disasters we face can be solved with A, B, C, or D thinking.
The major societal problems we face require reorganizing education so that, above all else, it encourages critical thinking, collaboration, leadership, imagination, creativity, empathy, and courage.
We need more of what I call #testdefyers—people who speak out and organize against standardized testing.
#Parents: Join the #OptOut movement!
#Students: Refuse to take the tests and demand the politicians take them instead--and publish their scores!
#Educators: Organize a collective struggle and boycott the tests by refusing to give them.
#Students: Refuse to take the tests and demand the politicians take them instead--and publish their scores!
#Educators: Organize a collective struggle and boycott the tests by refusing to give them.
My book, #MoreThanAScore is a collection of essays, speeches, resolutions, and interviews from leading #testdefyers around the country. Check it out. Then join the struggle. https://www.haymarketbooks.org/books/618-more-than-a-score
To learn more about how to opt out of #StandardizedTesting, see Fair Test's, "Just Say No to Standardized Tests: Why and How to Opt Out."
https://www.fairtest.org/get-involved/opting-out
https://www.fairtest.org/get-involved/opting-out
Sign the petition to demand that the Biden administration cancel the Spring standardized tests! https://actionnetwork.org/petitions/suspend-high-stakes-student-testing
See all you #testdefyers in the struggle for authentic assessment and social justice!
