Weaving Gender Equity - Challenge of the Month

Equity Challenge of the Month - April

The United States now gives its students more standardized tests than does any other nation in the world. This trend has substantial implications for mathematics teaching and learning. What do we learn from standardized tests? How do they contribute to the widening gaps between students? How do they affect classroom practice?

"Our children are tested to an extent that is unprecedented in our history and unparalleled anywhere else in the world... The result is that most of today's discourse about education has been reduced to a crude series of monosyllables: 'Test scores are too low. Make them go up.'"
- Alfie Kohn, The Case Against Standardized Testing

The United States now gives its students more standardized tests than does any other nation in the world. Coinciding with this rise in testing is a move toward inquiry-based (or constructivist) teaching and learning. How do these two trends fit with one another? What are some of the benefits and pitfalls? Which students are most harmed by the obsession with "accountability"?

With the advent of the Stanford-Binet intelligence test in 1920s standardized tests were used to sort students according to perceived ability. This still happens today - students are tested and then placed into different "tracks," or held back a grade, or put into an accelerated program, or kept from graduating, and so on. Many of these uses are the kinds of policies people refer to when they talk about "high-stakes" testing. Teachers and researchers have begun to document the impact high-stakes testing is having on mathematics classrooms nationwide:

less time is spent on the curriculum with more time teaching to the test
students drop out of school to avoid being "flunked out" by the test
students are aware of what they are expected to know in math
high expectations for all students are enforced
monetary rewards/penalties are distributed to teachers and schools based on test results
more time is devoted to computation instead of problem solving skills
students are tracked according to their scores on a single test
students are only taught the math content that is on the test
students are discouraged from inventing their own strategies because those strategies may not be as "efficient" (of particular concern for timed tests)
money is directed to tests and prep materials instead of good curriculum materials
students of color are disproportionately failing tests and not receiving a diploma or passing on to the next grade

What we are seeing in the implementation of high-stakes testing in many states is that the inequities between students are growing larger, not smaller. Data from Texas illustrate this point. Texas' accountability exam TAAS has been a requirement for graduation since 1992-93. In 1998, 70% of all students passed the grade 10 TAAS exam. When we break that number down by racial group, we see that 85% of White students, 55% of Black and 59% of Latinos passed the exam. The dropout for Black and Latino students also increased significantly since the implementation of the graduation requirement for TAAS. Just 50% of minority students and 70% of White students in Texas have been progressing from grade 9 to high school graduation since the initiation of the TAAS testing program.¹ In other words, the use of this high-stakes test has created deep divides between students who receive a high school diploma and those who don't. And it is students of color who are by and large being negatively impacted by the exam's high-stakes requirements.

Despite this kind of impact, many states are pushing forward with their testing plans. So the reality is that teachers, whether they support high-stakes testing or not, are struggling to make sure their students are well-prepared for state assessments. For many this often means putting aside the regular curriculum in order to focus on test preparation. Yet research is beginning to show that the best way to help students prepare for standardized tests is to fully implement a reform math curriculum.

A comprehensive study of students in Chicago Public Schools conducted by the Consortium on Chicago School Research supports this point. The outcome differences for two kinds of approaches - interactive versus didactic instruction - were reviewed. Interactive instruction consists of students applying and interpreting knowledge, choosing what questions or topics to study, and discussing answers with peers and teachers, while the teacher's role includes coaching and guiding students, posing questions that may have multiple answers, and assessing how students arrive at answers. In didactic classrooms teachers lecture or demonstrate, assess students on correctness of answers, pose questions requiring short answers, and determined what students study; students recite answers, repeat the knowledhe taught as it was transmitted, and rarely chose which topics to study. Chicago Consortium research compared the scores on the Iowa Test of Basic Skills (ITBS) of 110,000 students from 1996 to 1997. In schools where teachers used interactive instruction frequently, students learned 5.1 percent more than the city average in mathematics. However, in schools where interactive methods were used less frequently, students learned 4.5 percent less in mathematics. Although the one-year advantage may seem rather small, the effect can accumulate - over the eight elementary school grades the effect in mathematics amounts to more than half of an additional year of learning. ²

Inquiry-based, or interactive, teaching encourages complex problem solving, a deep understanding of mathematics, and developing one's own strategies. This kind of high-quality teaching can lead to the kinds of gains captured by the Chicago Consortium research. Yet students may also need support for basic test-taking skills. The Center for the Enhancement of Science and Mathematics Education (CESAME), based at Northeastern University, suggests several steps for developing students' test-taking skills:³

Explain to students that the rules for standardized tests (e.g. working alone instead of in small groups) may be different from those normally in place in the classroom.
Familiarize students with unfamiliar notation, vocabulary, and format throughout the year.
Discuss test-taking strategies such as eliminating wrong answers, being careful of "trick" questions, and filling in the correct bubble on the answer sheet.
Focus on efficient algorithms year-round so students are prepared for timed tests.
Have faith that the curriculum will prepare students.

The Weaving Gender Equity project has created a stand-alone workshop session on standardized testing that is available free of charge. Please visit http://www.terc.edu/wge/testingsession.html to download a copy of the session.

For further information on the equity implications of standardized testing, visit the National Center for Fair & Open Testing (FairTest) web site at http://www.fairtest.org

¹Haney, Walt. (2000). "The Myth of the Texas Miracle in Education" in The Education Policy Analysis Archives, Vol. 8, No. 41. Available at: http://epaa.asu.edu/epaa/v8n41/

² Smith, Julia, Valerie Lee, and Fred Newmann. (2001) "Instruction and Achievement in Chicago Elementary Schools." Chicago, IL: Consortium on Chicago School Research. Available at: http://www.chicago-consortium.org

³Gulley, Wendy. "Preparing for Standardized Tests." Boston, MA: Center for the Enhancement of Science and Mathematics Education. Available at:http://www.lab.brown.edu/investigations/spotlight/archive/preptest.html

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