Examine This
an NIH special report!August 16, 2006
The Elementary Teachers' Federation of Ontario was voting today on a proposal that the number of rounds of examinations in Ontario elementary schools be reduced from three to two. As you can see from the teachers' website, they're against both examinations and AIDS. As we went to press, the results of this vote had not been published, but the minister of education has said that a proposal to eliminate one round of examinations would have merit if it resulted in an increase in learning time. A reduction in examinations seems likely to be in our future, if not soon then eventually.
Well, there are drawbacks to some types of testing program, in particular so-called high-stakes testing, which seems chiefly to encourage cheating by teachers and principals. And of course the use of tests to punish children rather than to find ways of teaching them effectively is ineffective as well as reprehensible.
However, it is difficult to see how one can teach effectively without testing. If you're going to teach someone, you have to know what he knows.
Some teachers might argue that they know how their pupils are doing because they're testing them daily. Certainly they are, and certainly daily evaluations by teachers would constitute a valuable source of data for evaluation if they were analyzed properly. However, they are not.
The public schools of North America have at least two startling characteristics. One is that though they are intended to facilitate and encourage learning, teaching practice is not founded on the extensive psychological literature about learning, The other is that though they test, few teachers have any acquaintance with the simple concepts of psychometric analysis which would help them make their tests accurate measures of pupils' abilities.
The teachers' day-to-day ratings of pupils' work are opinions. They are not validated against objective criteria. Of course, many teachers know this. That's why those teachers like standardized testing (with properly designed commercial tests, not the political creations of provincial and state ministries and departments of education). Standardized testing gives them independent assessments against which to check their own.
It could be argued that periodic formal examinations have the same flaw. They, too, are not checked against objective criteria. However, the solution to that problem is not to eliminate the tests but to eliminate the flaw.
Before Ontario eliminated the high school departmental examinations, school boards directed considerable effort to making sure that their pupils performed adequately on these examinations. The departmental examinations were objectively marked, not by using multiple-choice methods but by comparing agreement between markers, who all worked together in Toronto over the summer. Poor performance by a school or board was quickly obvious. That meant that testing throughout the school system had to be reasonably valid, so that the students arriving in grade 13 were well enough prepared to succeed at the departmentals.
The ministry of education also used to evaluate schools' success in teaching with custom versions of the Scholastic Aptitude Test written by all grade 12 students. Their scores were not used to rate them but to rate their schools and boards.
These days of course, the only similar program in Ontario is that of the Educational Quality and Accountability Office, which reveals little information about the reliability or validity of its tests, or even about their form. Given the high variability in schools' rankings from year to year, and what appear to be frequent changes in the form of the tests, their reliability is suspect. Since reliability, or consistency, is a prerequisite for validity, their validity is suspect, too.
But the past will not be coming back any time soon. Too much time and money has gone into the suppression of social mobility for governments to go back to the old ways now. For the old ways produced one of the greatest eras of social mobility North America has ever known.
Until recently, Ontario high schools offered five grades, from 9 to 13, with grade 13 being completed only by students who were going on to postsecondary schooling. A graduate of grade 13 who obtained an average of 80% was designated an Ontario Scholar. So was a student who graduated in 1996. In 1966, 3% of graduates were Ontario Scholars. By 1996, 30% were Ontario Scholars. The reason for the increase was simple – after the departmental examinations were eliminated in the late 1960s, marks at the final examinations skyrocketed. Unable to pass the buck for poor marks to a provincial marking body, the schools fell back on pumping up the marks, not with steroids but by lowering the bar. But, you may ask, how did that affect social mobility?
First of all, in 1966 Ontario Scholars received an Ontario Scholarship. The scholarship was worth $400, or better than $2,000 in 2006 funds. That was quickly reduced to $150 after the departmentals were eliminated because of the increase in the number of Ontario Scholars, and eventually was reduced to zero dollars, the value it had in 1996 and still has today. Today.$2,000 would pay a hefty chunk of tuition fees, although probably not as hefty a chunk as in 1966, since fees have been raised.
Scholarships, bursaries, and grants are also scarcer today. It is simply much harder today for students of modest means to afford university. Many are funnelled into the community collages, which are largely vocational schools, the vocations being on the whole less remunerative and less influential than those for which one prepares at university.
I graduated from an Ontario high school in 1966. The high school was poorly regarded, and in a poorly regarded section of London, Ontario (part of dreaded EOA). However, all of us in grade 13 at Clarke Road Secondary School knew that at least the departmentals were not stacked against us. We would be rated according to the same standards as were the pampered plutocrats of Upper Canada College and Ridley College. When scholarship money was disbursed, our marks would count for exactly as much as the marks given by UCC and Ridley. And if we did well enough we'd get four hundred bucks from our friendly provincial government (five students did, out of about 105 students, so lowly Clarke Road beat the provincial average).
Within a few years those advantages had disappeared. Universities started adjusting graduating averages, since averages from different schools could no longer be assumed to be equivalent. This consideration also reduced the chances that students from less highly regarded schools would receive scholarship money. Anyway, scholarships, bursaries, and grants started being reduced in the late 1960s. Today, there are far fewer of them than there were in the 1960s, and students are expected to borrow.
So today the prospects of attending university decline more sharply as family income and net worth fall. Many Ontario high school graduates who would have gone to university in earlier times are diverted to community colleges. Many do go but end up saddled with huge debt.
We are told repeatedly by politicians that the Canada's future depends on its having a highly educated populace, that there is a skills shortage, that everyone should have the opportunity to accomplish his or her goals. The politicians don't plan, though, to do anything to help people get highly educated, to reduce the skills shortage, or to promote the achievement of goals. Instead, they're going to raise tuition fees and cut student loans, as they have been doing for some time.
What they plan to do is promise to keep taxes down. As another special report here notes, "raising taxes now has the status in society formerly accorded the sin against the Holy Ghost." The article notes how that problem resulted in the paltry "honours" that the federal government bestowed on veterans during the Year of the Veteran, and it also accounts for government's reluctance to act consistently with its own pronouncements about the critical status of higher education.
Provincial governments contribute to this problem, too. They consider reducing class size in the public schools to be a higher priority than helping the children in those classes fulfil their academic potential. Supposedly reducing class size helps children learn. Even if it did (and research has so far failed to satisfy most researchers that it does), what the government gives to children in reduced class sizes it takes away by not helping those children get university training.
An alternative to reduced class sizes would be to reduce university tuition, provide more student grants and more incentives generally, and institute valid, non-punitive testing programs to motivate students by demonstrating their progress not only to them but also to others, including universities and employers. Some money could also be spent on training teachers in teaching methods whose effectiveness has been confirmed by empirical research.
In the end, reducing examinations may increase learning time, and pupils may actually learn more. However, they'll have even less chance to demonstrate that they've learned more, and they'll probably still have no greater chance of getting to university. A large percentage of Canada's intellectual capital will be wasted or underexploited, and politicians will continue to give speeches about how crucial education is to Canada's future.
Examine This © John FitzGerald, 2006
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