Ensure students are prepared
President Obama recently stated he wants educational standards "that don't simply measure whether students can fill in a bubble on a test but whether they possess 21st century skills like problem-solving and critical thinking, entrepreneurship and creativity." Researchers agreed stating "although tests, properly interpreted, can contribute some important information about school quality, (quantitative) testing alone is a poor way to measure whether schools, or their students, perform adequately."
Surveyed employers state that graduates who enter the working world need the following qualities: oral and written communications; critical thinking/problem solving; information technology application; and creativity/innovation.
Jose Torres, the U-46 superintendent, mirrored this by asking: "How do we know the quality of education at our local schools? We hope to answer that by identifying a series of measures that we ought to track. We prepare students not for the test, but for lifelong learning."
I therefore challenge the U-46 school board and Dr. Torres to institute higher standards and to evaluate progress in reaching these standards using "authentic assessment." Authentic assessment measures what our students can actually do, as opposed to standardized (fill in the bubble) tests that, according to researchers, "assess only low-level skills that can be scored electronically and cost very little to administer - although their hidden costs are enormous in the lost opportunities to develop young people's broader knowledge, traits and skills."
Other states already authentically assess projects, portfolios, research papers, and presentations in their array of measures. Students who graduate from U-46 in the year 2013 should first demonstrate what they can produce. We are presently doing our students a disservice by assessing them mainly on whether they can fill in bubbles on a test. Our students can demonstrate much more than this. Why don't we give them the opportunities to do so?
Rich Levine
Elgin