Reject the wrong answer

As if midterms and finals were not enough, the government wants
to make standardized testing mandatory in colleges and
universities.

Remember those inane tests we took in grade school? The ones
where you got free juice in the morning and your teachers begged
““ on behalf of their jobs and three hungry kids ““ to
please, please, please refrain from bubbling in pictures on the
Scantron?

Well, a higher education commission appointed by none other than
the Bush administration ““ which already tells us a bad idea
is coming ““ wants to keep testing us through college.

The commission’s chairman, Charles Miller, stated in The
New York Times, “What is clearly lacking is a nationwide
system for comparative performance purposes, using standard
formats.”

Uniformity has a place in K-12 education. Public education is
mandatory to a point because of a common goal: teaching the basic
skills people need to function in society.

College allows you to develop specialized skills, and it is
optional. Therefore, it does not need to be standardized.

Higher education’s appeal lies not in being told what to
study, but in being able to specialize. Standardized testing
can’t possibly cover all this specialized knowledge, and so
can’t adequately measure learning.

Sure, taxpayers subsidize public universities, which should then
be held accountable for their performance. Private schools can also
be targeted, as they are federally accredited and must meet certain
grant requirements.

A New York Times report of findings by the 2003 National
Assessment of Adult Literacy that less than a third of the college
graduates surveyed could “read complex English texts and draw
complicated inferences” is often cited in defense of
standardized testing.

However, this reasoning is weak. What exactly is a
“complex” text? Sometimes I get confused reading
recipes ““ do burnt cookies indicate illiteracy? Who decides
which inferences are complicated enough?

If our college students really are terribly illiterate, why are
we assuming it’s the university’s fault?

Dale Lipschultz, president of the National Coalition for
Literacy, stated in that same article, “Literacy begins even
before preschool. … To look at it only from the higher education
level is not very effective.”

There is also contradictory evidence from other studies. The
American Institutes for Research found that prose and document
literacy rates in college students have risen. The institutes also
found that four-year college students have higher literacy rates
than the rest of the adult population.

Not only are universities improving the quality of students
without standardized testing, these students are also more literate
than the generation trying to improve their literacy.

One commissioner said the tests are supposed to provide answers
to the question, “How good is the product?” Since when
am I a product, and who are you to tell me how “good” I
am? With hundreds of majors available, how could a single test
fairly and accurately evaluate everyone’s learning?

The New York Times reported that the commission would decide
which “skills college students ought to be learning ““
like writing, critical thinking and problem solving ““ and to
express that view forcefully.”

To all you South Campus students working on a cure for cancer,
please re-examine your priorities and spend your time honing your
writing skills.

Although basic skills like writing coherent sentences and
subtracting are important, students should learn them in high
school, not college.

Commissioner Jonathan Grayer is another vocal supporter of these
tests. This is hardly surprising, since he also happens to be the
chief executive of Kaplan Inc., a company that makes billions of
dollars by selling panicked students products that, according to
their Web site, provide “essential Kaplan strategies that
help (them) avoid traps.”

These claims imply there is a secret method to performing well
on standardized tests ““ one that does not involve actual
knowledge or intelligence ““ and Kaplan would be more than
happy to sell it to you. This undermines the validity of
standardized testing.

Also, feel free to call me paranoid, but there appears to be a
slight conflict of interest. I can already see the books Kaplan
would be able to sell.

Kaplan would make a killing. With all the studying and mayhem
occurring in the life of the average college student, there
doesn’t appear to be a source of motivation for students to
read the questions, let alone spend precious brainpower trying to
answer them correctly.

Apart from the unending list of problems with the proposed
tests, a small detail being overlooked: It’s already fairly
easy to know which colleges are better at preparing their
students.

For instance, I strongly doubt that any students from the
literacy study’s illiterate two-thirds were from UCLA. The
majority were probably from USC.

It’s easy to figure this out, considering the elements
that accurately represent the quality of higher education, such as
research opportunities, admissions selectivity and professor
quality.

The students will naturally reflect their environments, for
better or worse.

A word of advice to the Bush administration: Take the
commission’s budget and funnel the money into the
universities themselves.

Then at least it will have a chance of being placed in competent
hands. As much fun as Scantron doodling sounds, I’m going to
back to my laptop.

E-mail Strickland at kstrickland@media.ucla.edu. Send
general comments to viewpoint@media.ucla.edu.

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