While looking through the scholars and the concepts available for this assignment, I decided to use Arlo Kempf’s book The Padagogy of Standardized Testing the Radical Impacts of Educational Standardization in the US and Canada. Specifically in this book, the chapter The School as a Factory Farm: All Testing All The Time caught my attention (https://link-springer-com.libproxy.uregina.ca/chapter/10.1057/9781137486653_2).
Kempf begins this chapter by discussing the fact that “testing is not the only important development underway in education”. This chapter continues by explaining that testing should be viewed as a technology that is available for use by teachers; furthermore, there are three ways that standardized testing can be understood. The first way describes standardized testing as an impartial neutral tool used for assessment while the second understanding revolves around the idea that it is an accepted value of society with particular biases. Lastly, standardized testing can be viewed as a critical approach that believes that the politics behind its development are equally important as its application. Kempf then goes on to state “All policy, all technology, and all curricula move in a particular direction and represent a certain political and/or ideological approach”. The quantity of standardized testing in Canada between grades three to twelve is on average three to five standardized tests. The more standardized testing practices in place result in more classroom time spent preparing for these tests and higher costs for the tests, and the United States has significantly more standardized tests than Canada.
In order for standardized tests to be objective they must be clear, accurate, and must be value-free (ensuring that social identity does not give advantages or disadvantages to students). Determining the objective of the test leads to the conclusion that they were not created to measure the quality of learning or teaching; however, they were designed to “the main objective of these tests is to rank, not to rate; to spread out the scores, not to gauge the quality of a given student or school”. It’s agreed that standardized testing fails to meet the standards of reliability and validity due to the norm-referenced design. Unfortunately, standardized testing practices fail to recognize differences, such as economic or cultural, amongst the student population. There seem to be direct correlations between low test scores and low income areas. Additionally, standardized testing is simply used to measure achievement which does not help teachers “plan a path forward”. The main idea behind standardized testing is the accountability it places on teachers, curriculum, and students to reach certain goals; however, there is no proof that it actually accomplishes these goals. Furthermore, school systems that are increasing the use of standardized testing are seeing a decline in academic performance.
My next steps for this assignment will be looking through the list of the authors and topics again to choose two more sources. I’m hoping that I will be able to touch on discussions about place-based curriculum as an alternative to a focus on standardized education. Additionally, I would also like to relate this critical summary to reconciliation and the curriculum or gender and the curriculum. I feel as though including these three as my focus for the critical summary will create connections of similarity and dissimilarity.
Kempf, A. (2016). The Pedagogy of Standardized Testing The Radical Impacts of Educational Standardization in the US and Canada (1st ed. 2016.. ed.).