Teaching to a test

For some years now, Arizona schools have had full blown involvement with Arizona's Instrument to Measure Standards (AIMS). Having been a professor in Arizona's junior colleges for over five years, I saw a lot of students. Let's just say that I was never overly impressed with their skill or knowledge level. Now with Standardized testing, like the AIMS Test, students who are already lacking in general knowledge helpful for survival, will degrade even further. Ranking schools according to the AIMS scores will guarantee that both students and teachers will concentrate on just the information required for the test and there will a further degradation of general knowledge.

Let me give an example. I taught Spanish 101, that is, introductory Spanish. One of the first questions I would ask the students every semester, was the following:

"What is the state that is directly south of and adjacent to Arizona?"

Now, without looking at a map, think of the answer. Give up? Well, let me ask the second question, "What is the name of the country immediately to the south of Texas, New Mexico, Arizona and California?"

Think you know the answer?

Let me give you hint, click here for the Wikipedia article.

The name of the country, for those of you who still don't get the questions, is the United Mexican States or the Unites States of Mexico. Mexico has thirty-one states. The state directly south of Arizona is Sonora.

In all of my classes, almost universally, no one could answer these two questions. Mind you, this was a college level Spanish class in Mesa, Arizona just179 miles from Mexico. When I ask the question to people randomly, I seldom get even a guess.

I use this example to point out that despite standardized testing or more likely as a result, the average American student knows practically nothing about the world around him or her when they leave 12 years of grade school and high school.

Looking at the AIMS test scores, it is apparent that most of the schools in Arizona fall into the range of test scores between 400 and 500. Although it is more difficult to read the scores than it is to take the test, if you look at the 2008 AIMS Scale Score Table, you can possibly determine that half of the Arizona students scored below meeting the standard set. Although the school may meet the standard, the score is a median so half of the students were below the standard. So not only are the students now learning only what is on a standardized test, likely half of the students aren't even learning enough to meet the test standard that is a score of about 450 to 550 or higher.

In their desire to force students to learn some basic facts to pass the test, they are ignoring teaching the students many survival skills at all. Another example, how many 12th graders can balance a check book without assistance and read a credit card bill?

Presently, a whole support industry has arisen around the tests. There are tutors, companies with practice tests and in fact, the Arizona Department of Education even has a set of sample tests. A system of education that was already impoverished is now almost totally bankrupt. Teachers who want to educate their students are forced to spend most of their time teaching to the test because their effectiveness is measured, to a great extent by the test scores of their students. What is worse, many students will begin to or already associate education with the AIMS test.