"Why Should Educators Assess Student Learning?"

Sometimes, when a student is way overage for her grade, teachers will still pass her to the next grade because, if she gets even further behind, it's not likely that she will graduate high school. This means a student moves on, regardless of how she does on an exam, class assignments, participation and, as a whole, how well she understands the material. In a section of Alan J. Singer's book Social Studies for Secondary Schools, he examines the question: Why should educators assess learning?

"According to the [National Council for Social Studies] (1991)," he writes, "'the overriding purpose of testing in social studies classrooms is to improve learning.' Unfortunately, that is not always the case."

There are various ways to excite students about taking tests and, more importantly, desiring high grades when taking them. Singer recites a few he experienced as an education student in college: encourage competition between students for higher grades (so that everyone would study), make all of the choices on multiple-choice tests the same length, avoid making "B" the right answer too often (because it is the most popular "wild guess" answer) -- among other tips. But, Singer returns to his main question as to why educators assess students using tests and grading. He is quite critical of the concept and argues that "testing and grading are only indirectly related to instruction and the assessment of learning. Additionally, the assumption here is that education is a series of contests between students and teachers."

The chief purposes of attending school are to (1) learn academic material and (2) use that material to become academically prepared for the following grade (or, year in school). But singer argues that:

"The purpose of testing was to assignment grades. Tests and grades were weapons to control classes and make students do the work through extrinsic rewards and punishments. Students who tried, but who did not do very well, we offered extra help, but ultimately put in 'slower' classes where they would 'experience success.' Those who failed the tests because they did not seem to care were cajoled with threats, calls or letters home, low grades, or failure for the course."

Again, Singer provides examples as to why tests and grading do not directly related to their jobs of helping students to learn the academic materials and preparing students for the next school year. Finally, he uses a specific example of one student who was quite charismatic about school and usually performed well but only in class -- never on tests. The student loved social studies and was very vocal in class, but he refused to do homework assignments and failed miserably on the tests. After retaking tests -- even after studying, but only upon Singer's request -- he still failed. Eventually, one day during lunch, Singer read aloud to him multiple choice questions and the students fed back the answers. He answered 80 percent of them correctly. Singer describes the student:

"He understood what we were studying in class, but he did not know how to read well enough to do the homework assignments or distinguish between the choices on the multiple-choice tests."

Ultimately, the student passed the class, enabling him to move on to high school. But, that was only because he was already overage for middle school. Singer explained that this case might be one of extremity but argued that it common to have students like him -- students who are excited about the information and about the classes but continue to perform poorly on tests because of poor literacy skills. "Unfortunately, in teaching, as in life," Singer said, "there are few fairy tale endings."

"Stuck in the Middle"

Here is the overage middle school students report (the top link) by the Out of Youth Coalition and written by the Advocates for Children in NYC. The introduction of the report states:

"New York City does not have a good record of being able to prepare all middle school students to succeed in high school. Leading education advocacy groups in the city, such as the New York City Coalition for Educational Justice, have documented that middle schools have largely been a place of failure for blacks and Latinos with "twice as many White and Asian eighth-graders meetin[ing] the New York State standard in ELA [English Language Arts] than African American and Latino students." Research demonstrates that middle grade achievement is strongly connected with achievement in, and ultimately graduation from, high school. Given that only one in four black and Latino students can expect to receive a Regent's diploma, New York City must make a serious commitment to improving middle school performance."

The report documents specific cases of students who have been held back in middle school for various reasons, as well as statistics seen in my previous blog entry.

The Opposite Side

Remember that many over-age middle schools students do not advance to high school for three specific reasons -- (1) Schooling is interrupted, (2) students need to change schools but have nowhere to go and (3) appropriate academic supports are not provided -- according to the reported published by Advocates for Children of New York City.

But what about the opposite end of the spectrum? The New York City public school admissions process has grown to be competitive and overwhelming. The New York Times published an article in December about the struggles of one mother and daughter to show the tedious steps for families who have children getting ready for high school. Reporter Jennifer Medina writes:

Ms. [Clara] Hemphill, who is a senior editor at the Center for New York City Affairs at the New School, has skipped at least two full days of work this fall, and has come in late or left early many other times to attend campus tours. She spent much of November on the phone with parents of children enrolled in the schools Allison was interested in. This weekend, her daughter had an 8 a.m. audition at Professional on Saturday and a 1:30 p.m. interview at Beacon on Sunday.

“I’m about as well-equipped as I can be, and I find it to be incredibly exhausting and frustrating,” she said. “You have to keep track of which application has to come with an essay, which has to be hand delivered, which requires a tour. It can be a full-time job.”


When they are in eighth grade, more than 80,000 NYC students must rank the city's 400 high schools in order from their top to bottom choices. When spring arrives, each student is assigned to a high school, usually the student's top choice. But the process is demanding and confusing because public schools do not have an admissions staffs like private schools do.

In this particular case, eighth grader Allison Snyder and her mother, Clara Hempill, make the time and have the motivation to trek through the tiresome high school admissions process. But what about those who don't? As mentioned in last week's posting, a new policy in New York City will make it so that students now must pass standardized tests to advance to high school. This -- in addition to the already demanding process of high school admissions, in addition to those listed by the Advocates for Children -- may only increase the number of over-age middle school students and might, in fact, fuel the problem even further.