Basic skills testing: What’s in a number?

Education has been on my mind a lot lately. But then, I live with a teacher and student, so it is always front and center at my house.

The past week, my daughter has been sharing about the annual run-up to basic skills testing. We’ve shared conversations about the importance of the tests, how the results affect not only her, but her teachers, school and, by virtue of the school being one of the largest employers, our entire community. We’ve searched the house for pencils to be sure she has a ready supply to thoroughly fill each answer bubble. And it’s been early to bed with a healthy breakfast every morning.

But this year, as I do every year, I wonder what my daughter and her teachers are missing out on while they go through this data-collection process? How many irreplaceable opportunities to experience the joy of learning are missed in the quest for some numbers?

In addition, I’ve been tracking our Iowa legislature as they debate what the governor has termed his education “reform” package and, once again, missed the deadline to pass funding for the next year. This deadline was missed not just because of disagreement about how much the state can afford. It’s also because the governor tied his reform plan (which is really just a repackaging of things many schools are already doing) to the money in an effort to push it through. Some of this plan includes which assessments or tests we’ll be using to evaluate Iowa schools.

That’s when I came across an article comparing our military and education systems. Written by Professor William J. Astore, a retired lieutenant colonel in the Air Force, and entitled “Why Johnny Can’t Read or Win Wars,” this article took a closer look at the misperceptions created when we reduce the results of our actions to numbers. His example compares the use of the body count during recent wars to the new penchant for test scores in education.

“What’s missing is the old-fashioned sense of education as a public good, as essential to democracy,” he writes. “ . . . Instead, today’s ultimate metric of educational success is not empowerment but rather employment. Education is reduced to training and success is measured by a post-college paycheck. Call it another form of body count: the number of (student) bodies who graduate with jobs. Never mind the ideals or morals of those students. Never mind their virtue. Those qualities can’t be readily measured, so we’ll ignore or dismiss them.”

I read this a week after I watched my daughter’s teachers and older school mates band together to provide for the immediate necessities of a student who lost everything in a house fire. What’s the measure for that?

As Astore concludes, it’s up to us to decide whether we want to churn out workers for jobs or people who can think critically, solve problems and lead.