High Stakes Assessment

High Stakes Assessment

Introduction:

           High-stakes testing has been an important part of both the Chinese and American education systems.  However, are they really useful?  High test scores often look good, but what went into getting them?  According to Jonathon Supovitz, "high stakes testing encourages educators to align curriculum, standards, and assessments". (Supovitz)  That sounds like a good thing; we want educators to use a standards-based system, and we want educators to use the standards to help drive their practice.  However, Supovitz also claims that its' hard to use high-stakes tests for data. Yet, that was and is often the case for what they are used for.   Schools can say they are doing a good job if students have high test scores, and for private schools that is all that matters. 

           I live and work in East Asia, and here the high-stakes test is a fact of life that teenagers cannot avoid.  If they want to get to America, they need to get through MAP, SAT/ACT, and whatever AP subjects they take on to help save their family some money.  If they stay in the Chinese public system, it's the Gao Kao, and that test is one of the harshest in the world. I live just outside of Shanghai, which was ranked 1st overall in PISA rankings. (Brown)  Education is very important in China, and Shanghai is the shining gem.  High-stakes testing is a part of that success.  

My school, and a comparison to KAIST, a university in Korea:

           I'm an elementary teacher, so we don't really have high stakes assessment for elementary students.  We do MAP testing for the students, but so far it hasn't had any effect on what class they go to.  The students can go into advanced level, mainstream level, and ESL level, but which class they are put into is not affected by MAP score results.  In a way, that is a good thing, as it de-emphasizes testing, but also sometimes it means we have students who are placed in levels that aren't appropriate for their English ability level.  I taught A level grade 4 last year, and while most students had a lexile level of around 500-850, I had one student who was listed as BR, which means they were really low level.  I asked the old vice-principal if we could move the student down into a better level for the student, she said no.  The parents were also very resistant to their child moving.  In this way, it wasn't so good.  We had clear evidence the student didn't belong where they were placed, and the student would have had a better learning experience in ESL. All of my in-class experience with this student suggested they should be moved, and I asked he be moved to ESL before the MAP results came out.  It only proved what I already knew, but the results were ignored.

  

            The new vice principal has more experience as a teacher and as a principal, 

so maybe we will use test scores to put students in more appropriate levels this year.  We will see.  As of now, there are no implications for MAP, the only high-stakes test elementary students take.  It is a new school, so the school takes in a lot of students who maybe would not be admitted to other schools that are more established. Also, because it is a new school, I don't think it is at a point where we as a school use tests effectively for data yet.

          It is different in the international department, which teaches middle school and 

high school.  My partner teaches in that department, so I asked him some questions about the students and high-stakes testing.  The students in the international department have a hard life, he says.  The strong students have to worry about doing well on the AP tests, and all students have to do well on their SAT and ACT tests, in addition to getting their TOEFL scores up past 90 to get into western universities.  The students who recently graduated started with an average TOEFL score of 60 when they started in grade 10, but the average TOEFL score went up to 87.  That is a big improvement, but it came at the expense of student's happiness and free time.  Students would often have TOEFL classes after dinner, going from 6:30-8:00 PM.  They only get to start working on their homework at 8 PM!  That is not enough time to get work done, study, or have a life.  Universities only get to see that final score. 

        Taking the TOFEL test as an example, what student would you rather teach: a student who went 

from an 85 to a 95, or a student who went from 60-80?  The lower scoring student has twice the growth, which shows they are more motivated to succeed.  Universities don't get to see that growth though, so they'll go with the higher score.  A portfolio approach that would document this growth instead of a singular benchmark would tell universities more about who the student is and what they are capable of.   

        SAT and ACT also provide the grade 11 students with a lot of difficulties. The students can't 

even take these tests in China because too many students and even some parents try to cheat too much.  They have to go to neighboring countries to do the tests there, so the students have to take time off of school, which means they have even less time to do their normal homework, which is a lot.  Sometimes the students are really unlucky, and the tests in Hong Kong, Korea, or Taiwan also get cancelled, and the students have to wait to take time off of school and try again.  The tests only happen in November and May, so they only get 2 chances to do well, and sometimes not even that. It's a very brutal system.  

  

        My partner also says MAP testing for the international department matters a lot and is directly 

tied to what classes students can take, and many students try to cheat to get a better score, so that they can get into harder classes and make their transcripts look more impressive than they are.  Or they do the opposite and purposely do bad on MAP tests so that they can go into easier classes and get better marks.  Either way, there is a lot of pressure to succeed.  I asked him if there was pressure on the English department to make sure their test scores were going up, and he said he didn't think so, but he's not an English teacher.  Nobody gets performance bonuses at our school anymore, so there's no extra incentive to teach to the test, which is a good thing.   

  

         My partner tells me he is saddened to see the students so full of life in 

September and October, but basically turn into zombies by November.  This seems the same as the article on KAIST when it says, " We aim to train students to have perfect grades and heads full of knowledge at the risk of producing walking zombies emptied of the desire to live". (Kristine)  This is because they just get so tired and burned out because they have so much work to do. 

         This is still education in China, and that means dealing with fierce tiger moms.  

 To them, every assessment can be high stakes.  I would get angry wechat messages at 10 PM sometimes from a parent whose child did not score well on the weekly quiz.  They care a lot about grades.  The Chinese parents don't care about behavior so much, but for some parents if their child gets a bad grade it's a very big problem for them.  The Taiwanese parents are a lot more relaxed about test scores; they want to make sure their children have a good learning environment.  There is a practical reason for this.  When Chinese students reach grade 9, they have to give up their "school passports", which means that they can never go back to the Chinese system.  The Chinese system has a really difficult test called the Gao Kao, and it determines the rest of their lives.  If a student does poorly on the Gao Kao, they go to a lower quality university, or they don't go at all.  It determines the exact university that they can go to.  That is extremely high-stakes testing, and is comparable to the Korean/Japanese student experience.  Like Korea, there are suicides when students do poorly on the Gao Kao.  Sadly, some even kill themselves before the test because they have such a high stress level from just studying for it. Unlike the article on KAIST, I have never heard or read of a professor/teacher who committed suicide because their students did poorly though.

  

        If it makes sense for their child to go back into the Chinese public education 

system before they reach grade 9, then they want to be sure their child can still do well on high-stakes tests.  All tests can be thought of as a diagnostic for their child's ability to take tests in general.  Some students just don't learn 2nd languages so well, so it might make sense for their parents to take them out of an international school and put them back in the Chinese public system.   If that happens they still need to do well at tests.  In a weird way, we would be hurting those students if we took away high-stakes testing at our school.  They need some preparation as a backup plan.    

Conclusion:

           Education in East Asian countries is a high-stakes game by design, however for Chinese students to get a western education, there are still many, many challenges.  Suicide does happen, but so far we have been lucky at our school and have not had to deal with it yet.  There is so much pressure on the students here; it's just unavoidable.   I think my department should at least consider MAP scores when they decide who will be streamed into what level, otherwise it's wasted data. For our international department it sounds like there's a lot of pressure on the students, but not so much so for the teachers to change their practices to teach to a test, which is good.

           My school cannot get away from high-stakes testing.  It's not at all ideal, but if they did we would run out of business.  

Then again, there is some irony for me writing all of this, as I feel stressed out about the PRAXIS tests that I need to do in order to complete this course.

 

References:

Brown, Sophie. Shanghai Teens Top International Rankings, OCED Says. (2013). CNN. retrieved from http://www.cnn.com/2013/12/03/world/asia/pisa-education-study/index.html

"Kristine",  Student Suicides in South Korea. (2001). Voices of Youth, retrieved from            http://www.voicesofyouth.org/fr/posts/student-suicides-in-south-korea

Supovitz, Jonathon. Is High Stakes Testing Working? (2015) PENNGSE. retrieved from

https://www.gse.upenn.edu/review/feature/supovitz