Friday, December 17, 2004
Results, results, results
[A brief addendum to part three ("Evaluating Evaluations") of a series on educational reform]
America is a society built around outcomes instead of process. If you need examples of this, just consider sports -- a favorite indicator of mine, since they are a total microcosm of society. What sports do Americans like? Football, baseball, basketball, NASCAR. Four sports where you cannot have a tie (well, you can in football, but it happens about once every three years). In baseball, the American Pasttime, they will play 27 innings on Opening Day to crown a winner. Similarly, what sports aren't very popular here? Hockey and soccer, two sports in which you have ties all the time.
In a related vein, consider this: You hit a poor tennis serve, but by luck it goes in the box. The next time, you hit a beautiful serve form-wise, but it goes a little long. Which one do we consider better? The former, of course; it went in! It doesn't matter if the second shot was a little long or a lot long; it was long -- it was not-in. Outcomes over process. Results above all else. I'm not entirely sure if this is a facet of American exceptionalism or if it exists in equal strength all over the world, but I'm pretty sure we take the cake.
It should not surprise you that this ties into education. I'm not making a profound point, but adding on to my evaluation post. We care so, so, so much about test results, but we give barely any privilege to process. How many times in school did you make one mistake in a math problem and end up losing all the credit? It doesn't matter if you had solid command of the material -- you got the answer wrong. We assume that getting a good score on the SOL test implies command of core knowledge; I tend to think it just as much implies command of rote memorization. A good result doesn't always indicate comprehension.
I'm not saying that results, especially well-designed metrics over a long period of time, aren't useful. Indeed, by the end of a 6-set tennis game it will be pretty clear whether or not you can serve. But more broadly, if we continue to give primacy to results instead of process, we risk losing a great deal of educational integrity; the worst imaginable scenario is a child scared to take intellectual chances and potentially be wrong.
Wrong is not a monolithically bad thing. Wrong is a necessary step along the path to comprehensive understanding -- which leads in the holistic picture to a lot more right. If you want to become a good tennis player, you need to hit a lot of slightly-long serves before you start hitting them all in nicely; you don't want to be always trying for that lucky bounce.
Moreover, there is a difference between the slightly-long serve and the one that's going consistently over the fence. Getting a problem slightly wrong but demonstrating good progress towards comprehension shouldn't be treated the same as not even having a clue of how to start. Yet, current standardized tests declare both scenarios the same: WRONG.
They say it's not whether you win or lose, but how you play the game. That's how it largely should be. But watch Game 7 of the World Series and tell me that the team that comes up short or the team hoisting the trophy cares a whit about how they played the game. Tell me that their fans care. Tell me that standardized tests care.
Batter up.
Comments:
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Okay, there are your concerns, and then there's the fact that most people are so lost that it won't make a difference whether you check their work or not (and by the way, in all the math courses I took in high school credit was given for work, and not just the answer). Your post series here seems to be your attempt to approach all aspects of pedagogical issues from a totally lefty perspective, and critique them on that basis. Some things, alas, do not fit into a left-right paradigm, and I would suggest education as being one of them. Liberals and conservatives basically now agree on the utility of testing as a way of improving performance, with the only holdouts basically being school administrators and teachers' unions. Yes, testing is harsh, and some people do fail, but that's the point. Outcomes matter in tests, and sports, because they matter in life generally, and outcomes reflect process. And outcomes matter in Europe, and European schools (think O-levels in England), too, even more so than in the United States.
You do have a point about hockey and soccer, though.
You do have a point about hockey and soccer, though.
# posted by 
: 9:25 AM
: 9:25 AM
All right, lots to respond to in that short comment!
First off, I'm not sure what a "lefty" perspective is -- if a "lefty" perspective is not simply assuming the underlying paradigms of education are necessarily sound, yes. If a "lefty" perspective is working toward an educational system which produces thoughtful individuals -- ones which have high-level critical thinking skills, skills which have been shown by every study (left and right) to reduce poverty, drugs, crime and unemployment -- yes. If a "lefty" perspective is offering a solution to an educational system which has dropped the U.S. into the bottom one-third of industrialized nations, yes.
What we're proposing isn't shockingly new, either. In fact, there are many isolated school districts and schools (public, private and charter) which engage in education much in the way we envision. Almost without fail, these case studies perform better on every imaginable metric than "traditional" schools. If you want an example close to my home, check out Arlington County's H-B Woodlawn program.
Now, to your specific critique on the utility of testing: I agree. The public demands it right now, and we're NOT proposing doing away with it. This is why I opened my post on evaluations by saying "Pragmatically, schools need some system of evaluation...we live in a world of supply and demand, and colleges and employers only have so many slots to fill and need some way to discriminate among applicants. Moreover, it would be nice to have an occasional method of check progress in elementary, middle and high schools, if for no other reason than to prove that our proposed paradigm works."
But my point is this: What is the ultimate goal of testing? If it's just to determine aptitude or, as a friend of mine suggested, determine how much has been learnED among a set of students, it does a mind-bogglingly poor job of it. Talk to any teacher and she or he can tell you about tests which indicate nothing except how well that student is guessing on a given day or how well they're regurgitating what's been drilled into their head (If you've been following along, refer to my "geographical glossary" story).
Yes, outcomes do matter. I'm not saying they don't, I'm not saying they shouldn't, and I'm not saying our proposed reforms won't have them. Even soccer leagues have ways of breaking ties come the playoffs. But when we give SUCH extreme prejudice to outcome over process, the process aspect gets lost in the shuffle. It constantly reinforces the paradigm of learning what to think instead of how to think, because as tests are currently designed, knowing how to think is less of an advantage than the rote knowledge.
"People fail, and that's the point," is only an appropriate sentiment IF the evaluation is fair. If person A is a better critical thinker than person B, but person B has memorized more than person A, it's entirely possible person B does better on the SOL (and recieves all the benefits that goes along with that). The utility of testing is predicated on -- should be, at least -- tests which truly evaluate. It's very hard to argue our current testing regime does that.
Thanks for the comment! We really do encourage dissent -- we want to be forced to refine our ideas, defend them.
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First off, I'm not sure what a "lefty" perspective is -- if a "lefty" perspective is not simply assuming the underlying paradigms of education are necessarily sound, yes. If a "lefty" perspective is working toward an educational system which produces thoughtful individuals -- ones which have high-level critical thinking skills, skills which have been shown by every study (left and right) to reduce poverty, drugs, crime and unemployment -- yes. If a "lefty" perspective is offering a solution to an educational system which has dropped the U.S. into the bottom one-third of industrialized nations, yes.
What we're proposing isn't shockingly new, either. In fact, there are many isolated school districts and schools (public, private and charter) which engage in education much in the way we envision. Almost without fail, these case studies perform better on every imaginable metric than "traditional" schools. If you want an example close to my home, check out Arlington County's H-B Woodlawn program.
Now, to your specific critique on the utility of testing: I agree. The public demands it right now, and we're NOT proposing doing away with it. This is why I opened my post on evaluations by saying "Pragmatically, schools need some system of evaluation...we live in a world of supply and demand, and colleges and employers only have so many slots to fill and need some way to discriminate among applicants. Moreover, it would be nice to have an occasional method of check progress in elementary, middle and high schools, if for no other reason than to prove that our proposed paradigm works."
But my point is this: What is the ultimate goal of testing? If it's just to determine aptitude or, as a friend of mine suggested, determine how much has been learnED among a set of students, it does a mind-bogglingly poor job of it. Talk to any teacher and she or he can tell you about tests which indicate nothing except how well that student is guessing on a given day or how well they're regurgitating what's been drilled into their head (If you've been following along, refer to my "geographical glossary" story).
Yes, outcomes do matter. I'm not saying they don't, I'm not saying they shouldn't, and I'm not saying our proposed reforms won't have them. Even soccer leagues have ways of breaking ties come the playoffs. But when we give SUCH extreme prejudice to outcome over process, the process aspect gets lost in the shuffle. It constantly reinforces the paradigm of learning what to think instead of how to think, because as tests are currently designed, knowing how to think is less of an advantage than the rote knowledge.
"People fail, and that's the point," is only an appropriate sentiment IF the evaluation is fair. If person A is a better critical thinker than person B, but person B has memorized more than person A, it's entirely possible person B does better on the SOL (and recieves all the benefits that goes along with that). The utility of testing is predicated on -- should be, at least -- tests which truly evaluate. It's very hard to argue our current testing regime does that.
Thanks for the comment! We really do encourage dissent -- we want to be forced to refine our ideas, defend them.
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