When I went to school, we learned reading and writing, science and social studies, math and arts and crafts. Sometimes we would receive something called the Iowa tests, which measured how well we learned the basics. We didn’t have “test prep.” We studied what we had reviewed in daily classes to take a quiz, which consisted of questions our teacher carefully selected from the material. If we paid attention and absorbed the keys to unlocking the mysteries of the subjects at hand, we could easily pass a quiz.
So what is with all this test prep malarkey, anyway?
It seems there is a test called PARCC (Partnership for Assessment for Readiness for College and Careers) which is causing a lot of uproar about measuring student knowledge. A commercial running now on many networks features a father whose first grade son comes home in tears and too tired to go to karate classes because he spent the day in school doing test prep. I always thought karate taught about staying focused and alert, but maybe I’m wrong.
Folks, everyday classroom studies are what should constitute test prep. What are teachers doing with students all day now, learning some catechism of preliminarily leaked practice questions (or perhaps the actual questions)? When I went to school, if you learned what 2 + 2 was, a test which asked what 3 + 1 equaled didn’t faze anybody. We’re not supposed to know the test before we take it. That stacks the deck in favor of the administrators, whose only agenda may be to answer to some bigger fish who only wants to see a successful lie.
Of course, statistics show that many students are graduating high school unprepared for the rigors of college and the job market, where grammar and math knowledge are necessary tools. In fact, I just noticed on the website for PARCC that a prominent sentence appeared thus: “Try out a paper practice tests.” If the people at PARCC don’t know the phrase should be either “try out practice tests” or “try a practice test,” there is little hope that this measurement of human knowledge will amount to much of anything.
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