Making my schools look good

Not too long ago, I wrote about why I don't like school choice advocates bringing up testing. Some of my issues can be connected to my personal experiences in the system. Perhaps I should elaborate a little on my personal experiences.

I don't think I took any of the tests being used, but standardized testing was a common practice when I was in school. Here in Washington, we were required to take the California Achievement Test. How did I perform? I generally scored in the 99th percentile.

If you have been to my blog before, you know that I attended some absolutely horrible schools. That was clearly not reflected in my test scores. How can someone attending lousy schools perform well on these tests? The importance of what's measured is overblown, and there's a lot that falls outside these measures.

I have already addressed some of my issues with these tests. What if a school values practical ability over test taking skills? What if a school is more supportive of learning material that's not on these tests? Such schools would be at serious disadvantages with this kind of testing.

More important to this discussion is why I hated my schools. My teachers promoted a culture of fear that ultimately led to a fear of thought. I went down that path for a period of time. That was when my test scores were at their best. I eventually saw the errors of my ways. I substantially improved my thought process, and my teachers turned hard against me. The ability to think for yourself is important, but it is not covered by standardized tests.

I was good at math. I had no problems manually calculating long division. Do you know how often I have had to manually calculate long division outside of school? Never. Between long division and thinking, I would definitely say that thinking is more valuable. Testing prioritizes long division.

For schools to do well with standardized tests, they must value what the test values. This is true even if the designers of the test have a flawed sense of priorities. Most standardized tests do a lousy job of properly reflecting practicality.

My teachers were absolutely hostile to independent learning. My teachers didn't just neglect learning beyond what was being tested. They actively prevented learning from occurring in that environment. For most students, this can seriously harm the desire to learn.

My teachers used emotional abuse as a motivational tool. Mental health is another component of educational quality that is completely neglected by these measures. Yes, students should learn, but they shouldn't be learning in environments that cause them serious harm.

I saw something posted online from the Office of the Superintendent of Public Instruction (Washington). It criticized school choice advocates for misrepresenting test results. The argument was that Washington outperforms most states, and most students are reaching grade level proficiency. If that's how we are evaluating schools, then the blatantly anti-educational schools I attended must have done a good job with me. After all, I scored well on standardized tests.

If we insist on using standardized test scores as a tool to evaluate how well schools are performing, one thing is clear. I made my schools look good even though I attended some absolutely atrocious schools. Obviously, I disagree with what my own tests showed. I might have been good at taking tests, but my schools did a lot of damage to me in the process. These tests measure a small fraction of what children should be learning. There's no doubt in my mind that I would be better educated today if I had never set foot in a school. There's so much these tests aren't catching, and we need to stop taking them so seriously. Regardless of which side of the school choice debate benefits from this measure, we need to stop using it.

This could be viewed as a bit of an oddity for me. I have seen a lot of teachers pushing back against standardized testing because it's too high stakes, and the information isn't as useful as people think. I have seen school choice advocates countering that teachers only want to get rid of tests because they make teachers look bad. I know that different people on both sides have different views, but teachers tend to be more critical of standardized testing than school choice advocates. That means that on this particular issue, I'm actually closer to teachers than a lot of advocates for choice. That doesn't mean I will start defending teachers. They think testing makes them look worse than they really are. I think it makes them look better.