Solving School, Part #1: Personalization and Standardization Are Like Oil and Water
Last week, the New York Times reported on a trend that deserves attention: there is an increasing resistance toward the inclusion of SAT and ACT scores among colleges:
“The number of colleges and universities where such tests are now optional — mostly small liberal-arts colleges — has been growing steadily as more institutions have become concerned about the validity of standardized tests in predicting academic success, and the degree to which test performance correlates with household income, parental education and race.”
Standardized testing is at the center of an emotional controversy. If you have children, it’s most likely an issue you care about. If you’ve been a child in the last few decades, it’s an issue you at least cared deeply about at some point.
And there is a large body of scholarship related to standardized testing. My favorite among them has been Nicholas Lemann’s The Big Test, a social history tracing the college entrance exam from its roots in the US military to its current status as an international institution.
The increasing international reliance on standardized testing was highlighted in a recent Slate article about the Chinese gaokao:
“Kao means test, and gao, which means high, indicates the test’s perceived level of difficulty—and its ability to intimidate. It is China’s SAT—if the SAT lasted two days, covered everything learned since kindergarten, and had the power to determine one’s entire professional trajectory.”
Considering just how important these mega-tests are, it’s not surprising that they’ve shaped almost everything about contemporary k-12 schooling.
# Teaching To The Test
Anyone who’s been through the SAT/ACT grinder knows how unfair and biased the standardized test model is. It leaves us with a negative perception not just of the tests themselves, but of the educational process that is increasingly molded to what we call “teaching to the test”.
Consider this quote from the slate piece:
“All schooling, especially middle- and high-school curricula, is oriented toward gaokao readiness. Students often joke that it takes 12 years to study for the test.”
Those unlucky enough to be involved in the public education system in the United States are all too familiar with frustration toward test-oriented teaching. In a No Child Left Behind educational culture, uninterested students take uninteresting tests, being administered by uninterested teachers. And that’s something of a best-case scenario
And the increasing connectivity between funding and standardized test performance seems to be making unethical behavior simply too tempting to resist. Earlier this week, a New York Sun article described allegations that a charter school located in the Department of Education’s own headquarters building may have illegally tampered with its students’ test scores.
The problem is that while we see an obvious need for schooling to be personalized, the promise of personalized schooling has been just as much of a failure as the standardized model .
# The Personalization Problem
There is a wide variety of alternative educational philosophies, most of which are starkly opposed to the rote memorization of test-oriented teaching. The Montessori Method seems to result in equal or better results when comparing to teaching-to-the-test. And Waldorf as well.
Of course, the dream has to end sooner or later. At some point, everyone is confronted with a gatekeeper. And if they’re not prepared for applying to university, or a job, or a grant, it can come as a huge shock at the worst time possible. The need to occasionally compile oneself into a standardized data object is just a fact of modern time.
It turns out, this isn’t such a big problem. After all, there are ways that personalized education can integrate some degree of competition into their curriculum. Some charter schools pull it off pretty damn well.
The big, huge, somewhat insurmountable problem for personalized education is that personalized learning simply isn’t built to scale. It requires plenty of personal attention and patience. And those are luxuries not afforded to the majority of people enrolled in school today.
# Solving School
I believe very firmly that we’re on the cusp of solving these aforementioned problems that plague schooling — or at least, starting to solve them.
This solution, quite simply, is more standardized testing. Much, much, much more standardized testing.
But before I describe my own wacky ideas in depth, I’d like to first go over some of the existing strategies for 21st Century Education. Because there are a ton out there, I’ll focus on those that are the most promising.
And as always, please leave your personal insults directed to me in the comments.
