Purdue News

June 23, 2000 School reform efforts must look beyond standardized tests Richard A. Lesh The recent calls for education reform seem to focus on the results of standardized tests taken by Indiana students, as if those scores are the gauge for future success. The problem with this is that the kinds of abilities needed to succeed after graduation from high school are quite different from the skills needed to do well on standardized test. In fact, tests such as the SAT and ISTEP are notoriously bad predictors of productivity outside schools. Think about the people you would hire after interviewing them for a job that involves mathematics, science or technology. True, some may be the same people with high scores on standardized tests, but you also value their ability to work in groups, communicate meaningfully, plan, monitor, and assess progress on more complex tasks. Yet, all of these abilities involve mathematical and scientific understandings that have never been assessed well using machine-scorable tests. Sure, it is important for test scores to go up, but problems arise when tests go beyond being indicators of progress to be used to define goals of instruction. For example, when we teach people to drive, we do not require that they go through years of education to learn every part of an automobile engine before they sit behind the wheel of a car. Instead, driving skills must be learned and integrated, and then raised to a higher order than simply a group of specific skills such as shifting correctly, braking effectively, and accelerating properly. The same is true for those in education, as we should look at the entire goal of education, which is to give young people the tools they need to be productive adults. If we really listened to business leaders, we would pay attention to more authentic forms of accountability. Business leaders seldom use tests to make decisions about hiring or promotions for employees. They emphasize performance on complex tasks. This does not advocate less accountability, but the more authentic accountability used in business. Through a grant from the AT&T Foundation in New York, the Purdue University School of Education is embarking on an ambitious enterprise to ensure that young adults have these intangible skills needed to succeed in a technology-based world. To achieve this goal, Purdue spent a year meeting with leaders in business, technology and education to consider what is needed for success beyond school, specifically how technology is changing what is needed for success in the 21st century. Participants included leaders from AT&T Corp., Eli Lilly and Co., IBM, Intel Corp., the National Science Foundation and Indiana University, as well as superintendents and teachers from across the state to develop a blueprint for improving K-12 education. As a result, Purdue will create a new center called the 21st Century Conceptual Tools. The materials to be produced by this center include "case study" simulations of real-life situations in which students develop, test and refine conceptual tools. The case studies will be modeled after those currently used in Purdue's professional schools and graduate programs – in future-oriented fields ranging from aerospace engineering, to business management, to agricultural sciences. The Purdue center's approach goes beyond piecemeal applications to provide not only new curriculum materials, but also accompanying materials for assessment and teacher development – and for enlisting the understanding and support of parents, policy makers and community leaders by introducing real-life situations into the middle school curriculum. This plan helps Indiana students and teachers move beyond an emphasis of low-level skills on standardized tests to focus on abilities needed for true success in the 21st century. Richard A. Lesh is a distinguished professor of education and associate dean of the Purdue School of Education To the Purdue News and Photos Page