Is Standardized Testing a Necessary Evil in K-12 Education?

"[T]he reality is, when it comes to our students, it does not matter if we personally believe in the necessity of standards or the benefits of standardized testing. ...[W]e cannot let personal frustrations and opinions hold our students back."

Marisa Adams, in "The Necessary Evil of Standardized Testing" on LumosLearning.com, January, 2015

Ms. Adams' blog post defends compliance with testing policies and practices as the best course for students and, regardless of where anyone stands on the testing issue, there is an important point in this quote. 

Getting an education is the central defining goal of the existence of our schools, so, it would, naturally, be heinous to hold students back from it. 

However, we cannot let potentially misguided standardized testing practices and policies hold our students back, either. 

Be patient for a moment to consider a parallel example: 

What if state and federal building code authorities came into existence and then imposed a requirement that the foundation of your house had to be made of bricks, but also banned mortar and all other means of securing the bricks to each other or anything else? 

I am sure there would be some who would argue that compliance with the legal authority of federal building code should take precedence over "personal frustrations and opinions." 

However, you would be a fool to comply. 

This policy would inevitably lead to the foundation of your house being unstable and occupying the house would put your entire family, all your visitors, and your family's personal property at risk. 

It is for good reason that foundations are not only made of solid material parts, like bricks, but solidly secured into a unified whole and attached to the structures they hold up. 

If the foundation is cobbled together piecemeal, then all that you have invested in making your house into a wonderful home is at risk of being lost to the next big storm or a minor earthquake.

It is our duty to make sure the foundation of education is secured into a unified whole and can reliably support the structures that depend on its integrity. 

All the proven teaching techniques, carefully designed curricula, authentic assessments, good teachers, up-to-date facilities, well-funded innovative transparent accountable school models, etc. are at risk of being lost to the next political storm or economic earthquake because in most K-12 schools the foundations of education currently lack integrity. 

We are trying to make school into a wonderful education home, but we are being fools so long as we do not prioritize investing in a solid foundation to support the house. 

This is not an easy task to take on because working on the foundation is a frustrating process. 

It goes against the grain of what is most popular in the media dialogue about schools right now and some popular ideas about what makes for good teaching. 

It also doesn't help that most of the mechanisms that undermine the foundation of good learning occur within the hidden curriculum, not in the arena of things that schools and education policy makers are explicit about.

The evil that is hidden is particularly difficult to fight. 

However, Ms. Adams is correct to point out that we should do what is right for our students independent of our "personal frustrations and opinions."

The question is how to discern the practices and policies that contribute to education from those that hold students back from it. 

What causes students to become educated? 

What are the necessary elements that students must experience in order to move forward into becoming educated? 

Current state and federal policies implicitly suggest that high stakes standardized testing and curriculum standardization cause students to become educated, thus we are admonished by Ms. Adams not to interfere with the operation of these policy-imposed "educational" practices based merely on "personal frustrations and opinions." 

As an education psychologist who has published research on motivation in educational settings, I have to question her assumption about standardized testing practices. 

Discerning Causality in Education

The scientific research community has weighed in on the causal factors for education for decades. 

Discerning causal from correlational factors is the central defining goal of science. 

Psychology is the field within science that takes primary responsibility for identifying the causes of human behavior. 

Education psychology researchers, like myself, do not have clear answers for every practice and there is not a lot of work directly looking at the causal efficacy of education policies. 

But, there is clarity about the necessary foundation upon which all education is built. 

That scientifically established causal foundation for education is support for students to meet their primary human needs. 

There are eight needs that have well-established scientific validation: air, water, food, sleep, shelter, relatedness, competence, and autonomy. 

The first five are probably sensible to most people, but the other three are too often not familiar. 

Here's what is meant by those terms:

• Relatedness, a.k.a. belonging or attachment, is the perception of being connected to and recognized by other people.*
• Competence is the perception of being effective at achieving goals in a situation.**
• Autonomy is the perception of being the causal and volitional source of your own activities.***

Scientific research shows that these three needs are the necessary components of psychological well-being and constitute vitally important parts of the foundation of education along with the other, more generally well-known, primary needs.

Given that the foundation of education is the satisfaction of primary human needs, then it is important to look at the impact of the standardized testing policies on these foundations in order to discern whether they are, in fact, educational. 

If those standardized testing policies undermine one or more of the very foundations of education, then they are not appropriate policies, no matter what history led to their being enacted (another element of Ms. Adams' defense of compliance). 

If, on the other hand, they do nothing to undermine the foundation of education, then it is at least possible that they are appropriate and, as Ms. Adams advises, putting personal issues aside to comply with standardized testing is proper. 

Isn't it ironic that Ms. Adams called standardized testing "evil" in the title of her post promoting compliance with the policies and practices that implement it? 

Her title brought to my mind the following famous lyrics:

"We don't need no education

We don't need no thought control

No dark sarcasm in the classroom

Teachers leave them kids alone

Hey! Teachers! Leave them kids alone!

All in all it's just another brick in the wall.

All in all you're just another brick in the wall."

"Another Brick In The Wall" by Pink Floyd

Based on what I've learned as an education psychologist, I have a new take on this song. 

Consider the possibility that the song is not challenging us to be, or not to be, bricks. 

We are bricks and there is nothing we can do about that. 

But there are some things we can do. 

First, do not allow yourself to be put into a wall that is based on the neglect and/or thwarting of primary psychological needs. 

"Dark sarcasm in the classroom" is a lament for the past psychological harms that occurred within the school system and the song calls us to ensure that they do not continue into the future. 

The call is to become solidly interconnected parts of a proper foundation for education. 

(I take the use of the term "education" in the line "We don't need no education" to be the use of the songwriter's license to refer to schooling rather than the process of becoming educated. 

The lyric would be absurd otherwise.) 

It is imperative that we each insist that our strength and solidity be part of an integrated system of supporting primary human needs in all K-12 schools. 

Only then can all the proven teaching techniques, carefully designed curricula, authentic assessments, good teachers, up-to-date facilities, well-funded innovative transparent accountable school models, etc. that build on the foundation reliably fulfill the purpose of educating our children. 

We must stand together to ensure that the true foundation of education becomes a unified whole in both policy and practice in K-12 and never allow it to be compromised. 

In education, we are the solid bricks and the policies and practices that enable and encourage us to mutually support each other's human needs are the mortar that binds us into a unified whole that holds up all those other aspects of schooling. 

Answering the Question of Standardized Testing

The argument for standardized testing as a necessity for educating students is weak, at best. 

Due to historical accidents of misguided bureaucratic imposition by politicians ignorant of the true foundations of education, some teachers may view standardized testing as a necessity because fighting it might put their jobs at risk. 

Standardized testing does deserve the label "evil" exactly to the degree that it compromises the autonomy, competence, and relatedness of teachers and students. 

So my answer to the original question is that standardized testing should not be considered necessary and it can be evil. 

I am open to the possibility that non-evil implementations of standardized testing are possible, but I am skeptical and would want any implementation of it to be carefully monitored for negative impacts on primary psychological needs. 

And also subsequently modified until the negative impacts are eliminated even if that necessitated the elimination of the standardized testing itself.

Click here to read about the Oversimplification of Educational Reform.

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Notes

* Ryan, R. M., & Deci, E. L. (2006). Self-regulation and the problem of human autonomy: Does psychology need choice, self-determination, and will?. Journal of Personality 74(6), DOI: 10.1111/j.1467-6494.2006.00420.x Back to text

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** MacIver, D. J., Stipek, D. J., & Daniels, D. H. (1991). Explaining within-semester changes in student effort in junior high school and senior high school courses. Journal of Educational Psychology, 83, 201-211. DOI: 10.1037/0022- 0663.83.2.201 Back to text

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*** Reeve, J., Nix, G., & Hamm, D. (2003). Testing models of the experience of self- determination in intrinsic motivation and the conundrum of choice. Journal of Educational Psychology, 95, 375-392. DOI: 10.1037/0022-0663.95.2.375 

To clarify the definition of autonomy: consider the distinction between "causal" and "volitional" sources of behavior. 

Imagine that you are in the doctor's office and s/he brings out the reflex hammer and aims it just below one of your knee caps at your patellar tendon. When the hammer strikes your tendon your lower leg kicks out indicating that your reflex is normal. 

That action by your body is clearly caused by an internal process, the reflex, while the hammer played only a small role by triggering the process that resulted in the movement. 

In that situation you understand that your body was the causal source of your leg's movement, but you also realize that neither you nor your body were the volitional source. 

The doctor was in control of the hammer, not you. 

In this instance you would feel that the movement of your lower leg was not an autonomous decision; it was the doctor's, not your's. 

An interesting nuance in this definition is that personal choice is not strictly necessary. 

This doctor's office scenario holds true only as long as we are assuming the typical professionally distant relationship between you and your doctor. 

If, on the other hand, the person wielding the hammer was an intimate other, then it is possible that you could feel so closely connected to that particular other person (and presuming that their wielding of the tiny reflex hammer is not the least bit threatening), that, even though you did NOT personally make the choice that lead to the movement, you could still feel that it was an autonomous act. 

Personal choice is typically equated with autonomy (especially in the West), but it turns out that it is not strictly necessary. Back to text

Song of Connection

Here's a delightful music video about our interconnectedness with the universe:

Leadership styles on public display

Here's another great conductor providing valuable insights into leadership and the heights of accomplishing it in a complex endeavor. The great thing about this talk is that he shows through video examples of different leadership styles and demonstrates with the audience several of them.:

Music Fun

With piano:


Without piano:

Music on the Brain

I just happened upon these two fascinating resources on the connections between music and our brains:

Harper's Interview with Musicophilia author Oliver Sachs.

Five part video of Notes & Neurons from the World Science Festival featuring Bobby Mc Ferrin, 3 brain scientists, a science journalist, and a few other musicians.

Kicks off with a set from Bobby McFerrin then goes into a fascinating discussion of the brain science of music for a non-technical, non-musician audience including demonstrations of many of the concepts.

Mathematician's Lament

Hat Tip to Bruce Smith at Education.Change.org for linking to this pdf file:

A musician wakes from a terrible nightmare. In his dream he is in a society where music education has been made mandatory. “We are helping our students become more competitive in an increasingly sound-filled world.” Educators, school systems, and the state are put in charge of this vital project. Studies are commissioned, committees are formed, and decisions are made— all without the advice or participation of a single working musician or composer.

Since musicians are known to set down their ideas in the form of sheet music, these curious black dots and lines must constitute the “language of music.” It is imperative that students become fluent in this language if they are to attain any degree of musical competence; indeed, it would be ludicrous to expect a child to sing a song or play an instrument without having a thorough grounding in music notation and theory. Playing and listening to music, let alone composing an original piece, are considered very advanced topics and are generally put off until college, and more often graduate school.

As for the primary and secondary schools, their mission is to train students to use this language— to jiggle symbols around according to a fixed set of rules: “Music class is where we take out our staff paper, our teacher puts some notes on the board, and we copy them or transpose them into a different key. We have to make sure to get the clefs and key signatures right, and our teacher is very picky about making sure we fill in our quarter-notes completely.

One time we had a chromatic scale problem and I did it right, but the teacher gave me no credit because I had the stems pointing the wrong way. ...

Sadly, our present system of mathematics education is precisely this kind of nightmare. In fact, if I had to design a mechanism for the express purpose of destroying a child’s natural curiosity and love of pattern-making, I couldn’t possibly do as good a job as is currently being done— I simply wouldn’t have the imagination to come up with the kind of senseless, soul-crushing ideas that constitute contemporary mathematics education.

Everyone knows that something is wrong. The politicians say, “we need higher standards.”

The schools say, “we need more money and equipment.” Educators say one thing, and teachers say another. They are all wrong. The only people who understand what is going on are the ones most often blamed and least often heard: the students. They say, “math class is stupid and boring,” and they are right."

Click on the "pdf file" link above the quote for the full 25 page document.

Wrestling with Hallelujah by Leonard Cohen

In this month's UUWorld I read Barbara Merritt's article about her process of coming to understand the song. Since I went through a struggle with it myself I thought I would share:

I was baffled by this song for a long time, to the point that I became so frustrated that I refused to listen to it for many months. Then I saw the movie Leonard Cohen: I'm Your Man. In that movie he talks about his zen practice and how it informed his life and perspective. This is crucial to the understanding of this song.

The thing that got me was the opening:

Now I've heard there was a secret chord
That David played, and it pleased the Lord
But you don't really care for music, do you?
It goes like this
The fourth, the fifth
The minor fall, the major lift
The baffled king composing Hallelujah

That line, "...you don't really care for music, do you?" was the one that stuck in my craw. Whose talking to whom? David, Cohen, me, God, a generic everyman? Given my default protestant christian cultural perspective I couldn't make sense of it. But when I got the fact that zen was involved it became immediately clear.

This is a conversation within himself trying to grapple with God. This song does not make sense to me if the personal God of typical christian belief is being addressed. But it does make very clear sense as a celebration (and sometimes lament) of our embodiment.

God, in the sense of a true transcendence, does not have human qualities. By definition a truly transcendent God is beyond human qualities, therefore to assign a human quality such as 'caring' makes no sense. Thus the whole piece is about the fact that we are embodied and the incredible contradictions that arise from that fact. The 'Lord' he's referring to is the very king doing the composing. It is in the nature of being an embodied being that WE are pleased with music, not that transcendence that we call God.

The song is an extended meditation on the consequences of embodiment and how we react to it, wrestle with it, and in some moments surrender fully to it. The beauty of it is the struggle with being at the mercy of our bodies, but also finding a transcendent grace in that imprisonment.

Here's some performances on YouTube:
Jeff Buckley
K.D. Lang
Rufus Wainwright

Zander does it again

This post is now on my web site:

Benjamin Zander is a Good Teacher

Music Education

This post is now on my web site:

Benjamin Zander is a Good Teacher

The Limits of Language

This post is now on my main web site:

Teaching Beyond Language with Evelyn Glennie

Led Zepplin/ Beatles Mashup

Here's the Beatniks doing Stairway to Heaven in early Beatles style: