In an Era of
Global Competition, What Exactly Are We Testing For?
Katrina
Schwartz
Renato
Ganoza/Flickr
In
this era of global competition, test scores are used as the primary benchmark
to call out which countries will produce “successful” students. Knowing that
American students are competing against a global pool of the best and brightest
has led education leaders to focus more on how they score on international
tests compared to students from other countries.
But
high test scores don’t provide a complete picture of students’ success,
according to Yong
Zhao, world-renown author, scholar, and professor of education at
University of Oregon.
“Countries
that score highly, have students with lower confidence,” Zhao said in his
keynote address to educators gathered online for the 2013 Leadership
Summit.
That
seems counter-intuitive, and Zhao isn’t claiming a causal connection — he
questions whether focusing on test scores might inadvertently lower confidence.
Zhao has analyzed data from the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study
(TIMSS) and discovered a negative correlation between high math scores and
confidence.
“Countries that score highly, have students with lower
confidence.”
Similarly,
in his analysis of the Program for International Student Assessment
(PISA), a test that analyzes how countries score in reading, math and science,
Zhao found a negative correlation between attitude and attainment. In other
words, the countries with lower scores had students who reported higher
interest in the subjects. Zhao analyzed media stories from high scoring
countries like Korea and Japan, where students don’t show enough confidence or
enthusiasm for subjects in which they excel.
He
found the same results when he looked at students’ belief in their
entrepreneurial capacity, their ability to start businesses or be
self-starters. “Everybody is trying to perfect this system and make a good bet
about the knowledge and skills that our children might need,” he said. “All of
this says that the measures we use to measure education outcomes, to view them
as the best education systems in terms of test scores, do not result in the
same kinds of things we might value otherwise — entrepreneurial capabilities,
confidence, enjoyment.”
TESTING FOR THE WRONG QUALITIES
Zhao’s
findings have led him to question the value of the tests altogether. If the
stated goal is to get kids ready for careers, and careers demand confidence,
creativity, and an entrepreneurial attitude, then why focus on test scores that
seem to produce the opposite effect?
“A
lot of times teachers have been asked to improve our schools, to make our
schools more effective, but the question I’m raising is, effective at what?”
Zhao said. “Some reading programs could improve your students’ reading scores,
but cause your students to hate education.” He’s concerned that national
initiatives like the Common Core State Standards could have unintended
consequences.
In
Zhao’s view, most education systems start out by defining the outcomes. They
make a bet about which skills will be important and promise that if students
master those skills, they will succeed. Zhao sees this as a flawed approach
because it forces everyone into a homogenous group, a bit like making sausage
out of all different kinds of meat. Defining outcomes allows systems to measure
results, but it stamps out individuality.
“The new education needs to start with the child. Not with
the prescribed content.”
Countries
that score well on international exams, like Korea, have clearly defined outcomes, narrow
curricula, and dictatorial systems with clear ranking and sorting systems.
Students know exactly how they stack up in that system.
“Everybody
is reminded everyday that they have to master the skills,” Zhao said. “But in
the process you have people who are either kicked out of the system or put down
into a different school and they will lose confidence.” By valuing what’s
prescribed and assessed, the system creates a uniform group with little
confidence in the individual’s unique contributions.
Zhao
pointed to the tremendous amount of local control in the U.S. educational
system as both its savior and a contributing factor to its lower test scores.
It allows for different types of schools and for students to demonstrate that
they can be good at different things. There are arts schools, engineering
schools and schools focused on bi-lingual education. That kind of choice allows
students the chance to find what they are good at. The U.S. system also gives
learners many second chances to keep learning and find their strengths.
[RELATED READING: Some Ask: What's the Value of Common Core State Standards?]
“The
new education needs to start with the child. Not with the prescribed content,”
Zhao said. “We start with individual differences; we start with their cultural
strengths.” Beginning with the individual and building upwards from there
allows each person to become uniquely great at something. And when students are
passionate about anything, they can then be creative and entrepreneurial. For
Zhao, the new model has to be about creating a new middle class based on
creativity.
To
do that, he suggests giving students more autonomy over their learning and
emphasizing the importance of making authentic products that solve problems. He
also emphasizes a global learning community that can collaborate to fill the
gaps that each country, school or teacher experiences.
ZHAO’S INITIATIVES
Zhao
is actively trying to create the learning experiences he has written and
lectured about. He’s started an online education community called ObaWorld,
which costs $1 per student per year and is a closed, private site. It’s a
cloud-based learning platform, like Moodle, and includes similar features like the
ability to make and evaluate portfolios. But Zhao is most excited that he’s
recruiting students and teachers from all over the world to participate. So a
teacher can create a tool or course and put it on ObaWorld to help an educator
on the other side of the country.
His
other big push is to create more entrepreneurial school leaders through the Global Education Leadership Master’s program,
which is based online and accredited through University of Oregon. Students
will have to create a product that will improve education and will be
encouraged to think about schools as entrepreneurial global enterprises.
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