Teach the Test
September 15, 2010
Recently on a forum that I visit nearly every day that is focused on pandemic flu and general preparedness,
http://www.singtomeohmuse.com/viewforum.php?f=1&sid=c1080ae96159ed3ebb8676cd65f19a80
there was a short discussion on the decline of the educational system in the U.S. It certainly is obvious, that compared to other developed countries, we have lost our competitive edge in education.
I do not have all of the answers for what is wrong with our educational system, I think the problem is multi-faceted. But I do want to share the viewpoint that I received from a teacher in one of my graduate classes. His main theme was – Teach the Test. I should point out that he is the only educator in all of my years of schooling, K-12, secondary, post-secondary, and graduate, that ever presented this style of teaching.
“OK class, remember that the test is on Friday. It will cover material from chapters 7-12 and also material that we have covered in class. There will be a mix of True/False, matching, short answer, and also an essay question.”
Sound familiar? This is the generally accepted method of teaching in our schools today. Students are expected to read the material outside of class and attend class and take notes on additional information the teacher disseminates. I find absolutely nothing wrong with that. However, when it comes time for the test, the student is left guessing as to what exactly will be on the test. Will it be mostly from the text? Maybe he/she will go primarily with lecture material to see how many of us were actually paying attention and taking good notes. Are my notes good enough? Should I try to borrow somebody else’s notes?
My instructor pointed out that this is foolishness in the extreme, a completely counter-intuitive manner of assessing a student’s grasp of the material. It is bass-ackwards as my granddad was fond of saying. Think about it, is this how the military teaches their recruits? Is this how you learn in a vocational/technical environment. Not at all. In the military the recruit is given what he is going to be tested on and he has complete knowledge of the test beforehand. Therefore, his or her focus is on actually learning the material frontwards and backwards until the test can be successfully mastered. My teacher proposed that in every successful educational environment, the student has prior knowledge of the test before they take it.
Wait a minute, you exclaim. That won’t work. If we give the student the test beforehand, then they will know all of the answers and everybody will get an “A”. That would be true if the test was testing simple recitation of subject matter. However, if the test is constructed properly, so that it caused the pupil to apply the subject matter, to actually think instead of memorizing, then having the test beforehand does not guarantee a perfect score. It will however, guarantee that those students who have mastered the test have also mastered the subject material.
Initially, I was skeptical as my teacher put forth this totally alien educational concept to the class. However, we all soon found out that having the test beforehand didn’t make for an easy “A”. The questions on the test could not be answered by simply reading the material and finding the facts to recite. The questions were complex and required gathering material from the texts and then applying it in a framework supplied by the instructor. This was one of the most difficult courses I had in my graduate course of study. I also knew the material we covered in that class intimately when I was finished. Granted, a lot of that faded over time, but I have remembered the one thing that the instructor told us never to forget, and that is if you want to sucessfully impart knowledge to a student, you have to teach the test.
Now you may be asking, if this method is superior to what we all have experienced in school, why aren’t we doing that? The main reason is that constructing a test that is given to the students prior to their testing requires significantly more effort than the current material used in our schools. The teacher must invest much more time and effort in the course, and they can’t used the pre-made crap supplied with the text book. My instructor did mention that his “radical” ideas on education were not favorably accepted, even in higher education, and K-12 and secondary instructors and administrators hated him outright.
Teach the test. Makes sense doesn’t it? If we really want to fix our educational system, we could start with that.
