"Teaching to the test" is a colloquial term for any method of education whose curriculum is heavily focused on preparing students for a standardized test.
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Opponents of this practice argue that it forces teachers to limit curriculum to a set range of knowledge or skills in order to increase student performance on the mandated test. This produces an unhealthy focus on excessive repetition of simple, isolated skills ("drill and kill") and limits the teacher's ability to focus on a holistic understanding of the subject matter. With high stakes testing impeding over every decision a teacher makes, they are often forced to teach to the tests rather than to their students. Education involves the heart as well as the mind. Teaching to the test entails instruction devoid of passion and meaning as students are taught information from a stripped-down curriculum. This would be an incidence of Campbell's law, the general principle that a social indicator distorts the process it is intended to monitor. Furthermore, opponents argue, teachers who engage in it are typically below-average teachers. Some research suggests that teaching to the test is ineffective and often does not achieve its primary goal of raising student scores.
Activities
Teaching to the test is teaching information and then giving a test over the information at the end of the unit. Typically, these tests aim to make sure that students have memorized a series of procedures, rather than making sure that the students fully understand what they are doing; in other words, these tests are a measure of a students arbitrary knowledge rather than their capacity for logical thinking. Teaching to the test is also frequently used for skill-based learning, like typing or athletics; in this context, teaching to the test is the dominant practice. For one reason, teaching to the test misrepresents how much students really have learned about a topic. In an example, students who have learned vocabulary words for a portion of the reading test will score well even though they have not developed a broad vocabulary. In mathematics, students who have been drilled on only test like questions do not have the opportunity to master a particular skill or concept and often can not correctly answer questions that assess the same skill or concept in a different way. According to Craig Jerald, one study has shown that a district has relied heavily on an item drilling, 83 percent of students selected the correct answer to a multiple choice item as "87 - 24 =." However, only 66 percent could provide the correct answer to the open ended item "Subtract 24 from 87."
Criticism
The No Child Left Behind Act, which placed a far higher emphasis than before on the evaluation of schools' effectiveness through standardized tests, is considered by many to have been a step in the wrong direction with regards to American schooling. Teaching to the test is frequently criticized by academics and educators, and its critics argue that students who are simply "taught to the test" fail to achieve a lasting and comprehensive understanding of subject matter; that even if it raises test scores, – which different studies have found varying results on, – students may not truly grasp the domain's key concepts because teaching to the test centers on rote memorization while excluding the building of creative skills and abstract-thinking ability. Teachers who want to raise test scores, contrarily, must promote deep conceptual understanding of the subject matter. According to Richard D. Kahlenber, both teachers and students spend most of their time studying the textbook concepts to prepare for exams. In actuality, though, students need morality, aesthetic, and life skills, and (depending on the student's ambitions) creativity, for future success. According to critics, educational systems that center on standardized tests do not truly educate students or provide them with the ability to fulfill the needs of their future lives.
The practice has also been shown to reduce the validity of standardized tests, and can create an incorrect profile of a student's achievement. Dr. Louis Volante, an associate professor at Brock University, observed that test scores are, for many reasons, not necessarily a fair indicator of a student’s ability. Some students who master class materials through homework or study may not succeed in testing environments due to a lack of test-taking skills.
On the other side, a WNBC-TV senior correspondent named Gabe Pressman expressed that benchmarks for standardized tests sometimes can be affected by political pressure. In many cases test scores are dumbed down to achieve the forecasted figure; as a result, improvement in standardized tests result does not always represent students’ real levels of skill.
W. James Popham, an emeritus professor at University of California Graduate School of Education Studies, also claimed that standardized tests are not a fair game to students with different backgrounds. The high-stake exam would be a larger challenge to international students, who probably have had different class materials and learning methods. If the teaching to the test still exists in U.S. education system, the drop rates of new immigrants are likely to be high.
Ethics
A 1989 study on teaching to the test evaluated the ethical "continuum" of the practice, and identified seven practice points, ranging from most to least ethical:
- General instruction on local objectives
- Instruction on general test-taking skills
- Instruction on objectives generally measured by standardized tests
- Instruction on objectives specific to the test used
- Instruction on objectives specific to the test used and using the same format
- Instruction using a released test or a "clone" test that replicates the format and content of the test used
- Instruction using the test to be used, either before or during test administration
The study concluded that the ethical boundary fell between points three and five, with points one and two being ethical and points six and seven being unethical.
In practice
The federal No Child Left Behind Act in the United States has increased the practice of teaching to the test because of its emphasis on standardized test scores; this is especially true in schools with disadvantaged students, which rely heavily on government funding. Test-preparation courses and cram schools are limited examples of teaching to the test.