Ok, where to begin….OH! how about with my miserable failing?? Got a 6/10 here folks, not exactly ivy league results. The look of frustration in my face as I took this “intelligence” test was definitely a mirror to the look of horror on my students’ faces this year when it came time to take standardized tests in school. Like my students, I felt ill prepared to take this test and actually do well on it. The first question threw me, and I began to feel by the third that there was no way I was going to “pass” this test. Those feelings of discouragement are similar to what my students describe they feel during testing, as each question throws them further from confidence in their abilities. The “stereotype” threat discussed above is a perfect example of this phenomenon, as it is directly linked to what our students do in the classroom – get worked up over testing and psych themselves out from performing well, if they even care at all. The testing culture in our schools, at least in mine, is a lip service hype that begins four weeks before the DCCAS with posters around the school and a “word of the day” announced over the intercom system. Teachers are supposed to go over particular skills in their classrooms daily in preparation for the test, while students slouch in seats, stare at the ceiling, and generally show little interest in getting ready for a test that determines some very important things for their school. What is missing here is INVESTMENT on the part of teachers, students, and administration to deal with the new testing realities we face in our classrooms. Testing is not going anywhere. What we need to do is fix it to reflect the cultural, economic, and social diversity we find in out academic institutions. Tests in and of themselves are inherently biased in some way, as the writers cannot possibly anticipate the backgrounds and experiences of every kid taking them. The language used can be biased, the content of the questions, the testing model in itself (re: you go to a school where the classroom setting is dynamic and hands on, manipulable. Yet, you must test sitting in a chair for 4 hours without few breaks and nothing to do with your hands but bubble answers. This environment is antithetical to your classroom behavior, and thus, you are at a disadvantage for your testing environment because you are not used to it). Also, the prep time for tests can be biased against certain people and groups, as some schools are able to spend more time prepping for tests if they have a stable environment at the school and a staff and administration that actually PLANS and know what they are doing. So, for our kids, nothing above works for them. Thus, they already enter testing behind and struggling for limited success. When talking about “intelligence” testing, I am left to wonder what the overall point of a liberal arts curriculum is??? What are we teaching our kids? Reading, writing, and arithmetic, of course, but do not we also teach them how to analyze, interpret, question? Are we not there to give them a basis through which to explore further learning? If at 16 my kids need to learn how to write expository paragraphs and formulate simple sentences, is it not my job to teach them those things FIRST, just as pure survival skill? What then of teaching them Shakespeare? To Kill A Mockingbird? Robert Frost? Coming from an English background, I know that general knowledge of these canonical texts is vital to success on standardized tests. But really, what it more important here? Recognizing a quote from Hamlet? Or being able to read a passage and comprehend it and write a well-constructed paragraph in standard English? We have to weigh cost-benefit analysis here as teachers when it comes to the instruction and testing of our students. We must teach them the academic skills necessary to SURVIVE first in this world, and then worry about the rest. Testing must be taken seriously however, even if the tests are ridiculous and do not properly measure much of the intelligence our kids possess. My kids are some of the smartest people I know, but not always in the way we think of “academically intelligent” kids. They are smart in ways that transcend books, ways that make them wise. Yet, it is not these smarts that the testing proctors know of, and not these smarts they are concerned with. I believe there are many kids of intelligences, and it is unfortunate we do not have a way to measure those types of standards. As teachers, we must teach to and differentiate for these multiple intelligences in our classrooms, and there is a HUGE movement behind this in education today. Yet, our testing policies frown on this approach to education, leaving standardized tests in the stone age in comparison to recent pedagogy. It is unfortunate that the one-size-fits-all mentality is still present in our schools…but what can be done about it? It would require a huge paradigm shift in thinking to change testing culture, and I am not hopeful it will happen in my lifetime. So, how best to prepare our kids? What should we do for them? I am reminded of a testing question we were told about that asked kids to do math problems. In one wordy question, kids in rural West Virginia were asked to complete a problem involving an escalator. Many of them had never heard of such a thing. In LA, urban kids were asked a math problem involving grain and silos. Many of them had never been on a farm, let alone around a silo. So, if the initial WORDS are the first bias, and others build from there, how can we EVER call standardized tests a measure of intelligence? These tests test the test taker on how good they are at taking tests, how much background knowledge they have to attempt an answer, and how much luck they have when they have to guess. I am a proponent of eliminating standardized testing completely in favor of more diverse assignments like portfolios, projects, and papers. These are a better gauge of knowledge acquisition than anything else, and we must be sure to use these assessments as much as possible in our classrooms.