What do we make of this? Should we know more details about history, geography, and literature? What is the half-life of this knowledge, anyway? Albert Einstein advised not to bother remembering anything that could be looked up. The state of Virginia, in its Standards of Learning, does not agree with Einstein. The Washington Post recently reported that, in fact, one elementary school uses "Millionnaire" questions to help their students review! Memorization of facts seems to be paramount, as students do an endless array of discrete multiple-choice questions. Greenbrier East principal Rebecca Pearson remarks that,"Right now we're focusing so much attention on the [Standards of Learning] that the other pieces are not being addressed. [Children] need to know how to think creatively and critically." In a separate story, the Post reported the results of a survey of northern Virginia parents by John E. Bonfadini, a professor of education at George Mason University. Only 17 percent of parents polled thought the tests are "an accurate measure of my child's achievement." 65 percent of the parents agreed that "Teachers spend too much time teaching to the test rather than teaching other important materials and topics." 45 percent thought the tests are unnecessary.
Similar choruses across the country are critical of newly developed standardized tests. A New York Times story reported that about three hundred high school students in Massachusetts last spring organized a wildcat strike against their state's recently instituted battery of tests. (Click here to access their web site, scam-mcas.org.) Presumably, by 2003, Massachusetts will become one of a majority of states that require passing a standardized test to graduate, although, as reported in our last issue, Massachusetts has had to scale back its demands of its graduates. In addition, the state of Wisconsin has changed its mind and has decided not to require any such graduation hurdle.
In the state of New York, the campaign we reported on in our last issue by forty alternative schools to substitute end-of-year projects for standardized tests was rejected by State Education Commissioner Richard P. Mills, as reported in the Times. All students in New York will need to pass the revamped battery of statewide Regents exams, a system that will be--again, presumably--fully phased in by 2003.
In 1991, the state of Oregon, always ahead of its time, decided to enact new standards with a wrinkle: the college community collaborated with the state's high school teachers. It turned out that--surprise--high schools were trying to cram tons of facts into the heads of their students, but colleges--surprise--wanted their students to have good reasoning skills. (Source: Sunday Times Education Review)
Which brings us back to the local scene: The same Post article, about Virginia's Standards of Learning, says that Maryland, in its Performance Assessment Program, asks its students more thoughtful questions, requiring students to be creative and to explain their answers, but that still require rudimentary factual knowledge. Somerset principal Alfret J. Slarew comments, "We teach the basics, but we're also teaching students to articulate their thoughts, to read and synthesize information."