Should schools require more rigorous testing of students to determine literacy levels?

No

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by Ernest Capraro

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It could almost be a joke, testing as rigorously as possible for the sake of improving education. Almost - if only it weren't a serious suggestion. Consider the logic carefully: Our students are not receiving as thorough an education as we feel they need. To ensure that they are receiving proper instruction, let us devote extra class time to testing them, to better monitor their performance. Now they spend one less week learning, but we have a more accurate measure of performance. Wait! Performance appears to have slipped, according to the new test scores. Clearly, the testing was inadequate. Double the testing, making sure to explore every imaginable skill in depth. Take another week or two if need be, evaluation is the only way to improve education. The fallacy should be apparent. As the cycle repeats, the time for lessons lessens. Certainly, an accurate measure of literacy can be obtained in this fashion. The less time allowed for learning, the lower we can expect that literacy level to be.

Literacy is terribly important, make no mistake. Reading skills are a basic need in today's society, and a deficiency puts an individual at a great disadvantage. Large scale testing however, as illustrated above, does nothing to improve literacy. It does give bureaucrats numbers to throw around as they juggle budgets and re-election schemes. It only strips students of their classroom time. There are better approaches, both to monitoring and improving literacy.

Teachers can monitor literacy by incorporating reading exercises and activities into every class. Traditional texts are a start, or course, but they are generally uninspiring, and do not encourage participation. There are also works of fiction on every topic which make for more pleasurable reading, and still offer many educational opportunities, if chosen wisely. ("Flatland" should be required reading for teachers of Geometry. "The Guns of the South" would offer much to American History.) Teachers monitor their students through multiple approaches. The simplest is to listen as a student reads aloud, and this basic analysis is often utilized. Reading aloud, however, is not literacy. Literacy requires comprehension as well as the ability to pronounce the words. To check for comprehension, the teacher must seek feedback, and this is what is often forgotten. For a start, scrap book reports. It is too easy to find notes on books and craft a report from them. This is not literacy, but a shortcut that enables illiteracy. Instead, make feedback an immediate thing. Brief writing assignments (which also exercise literacy skills) should follow reading. They can take the form of questions - but should not rely heavily on basic reiteration of events. If students can go back and find the passage, they can copy the answer, and again, little thinking or understanding (literacy requirements) are required. Instead ask for interpretations, opinions, or reactions to events in the story. Ask the student to apply the new textbook concept to a real-world scenario. Require the higher level thinking that connects the text on the page to the student and the "real world". So long as words are just words, they have little value, and students have little impetus to master literacy skills. When words become the keys to exploring who they are and discovering new aspects of life and the world, students have great motivation. And of course, the feedback also gives the teacher something to look at, to better evaluate depth of understanding, and literacy.

When a student is identified as having a lower than desirable literacy level, the teacher can begin to work with the student (tactfully and discretely) to help them catch up to (or exceed) the rest of the class. Students who struggle with reading and/or writing know that they are weak in these areas. They are, in fact, painfully aware of it. It's embarrassing, and so they do their best to conceal it from everyone - friends, teachers, and parents alike. For this reason, a gentle approach is necessary. Broaching the topic after class, without other students to overhear is an option. Contacting parents first to allow a safer discussion at home first is also an option. In either case, the goal is not to point out that the student is "deficient" in any way. Instead, the idea is to provide support and opportunities for the student to improve and advance. Students generally like to succeed, especially if it can be presented in an appealing light. (Tests, by the way, are not appealing.) It isn't out of the question to attach extra credit or some other incentive (pizza?) to the extra work. (Chances are the student can use it anyway.)

Contrast the two concepts if you will: testing to determine literacy levels, versus monitoring literacy during the course of the lesson. The first gives a definite result, which can be used to rank each student against any other student throughout the country. A fabulous statistical tool, indeed, but it deprives students of significant amounts of class time, and does not offer any flexibility for individuality. The second relies heavily on the teacher's ability to observe, and is, in part, a subjective measure. To some people, this is scary. ("What if my cousin's brother-in-law's son in a different district gets a higher reading score than my Suzy, even though I know she can read better than he?") Teachers are trained exactly for this, and work hard to not only be objective, but to consider every student's strengths (and weaknesses) to make the learning experience as effective for them as possible.

Remember too, the goal is for students to achieve actual literacy, not a high literacy score on some otherwise meaningless test. Ten years down the road, as they are interviewing for jobs, consider whether a potential employer would be more impressed by an applicant who correctly interprets application directions and provides a well-written letter of interest, or an applicant who waves a slip of paper saying, "I scored a ninetieth percentile in reading in tenth grade!"

Rigorous testing? Perhaps one day we'll be able to look back and laugh.

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