Standardized Test as an Ideology

October 4, 2013
          After reading the book Hope in Troubled Times by Bob Goudwaard, Mark Vander Vennen, and David Van Heemst my view of ideology has been redeveloped. I am now able to see the world in a different light realizing that there are many ideologies. It’s my responsibility to not become a slave to these ideologies as well as reminding others to do the same while pointing them to the only hope in this world and that’s Jesus.

The problem with ideologies is that they are everywhere in our world, even in the education system. One element of education that I believe bears some tendencies towards an ideology are the standardized state/national tests that students take each year.  Learning is no longer learning for the sake of learning but learning to pass the tests. Although the education system is flawed there are possibilities for solutions along the way.

            First, it is important to understand the concept of ideology presented in Hope in Troubled Times. The originator of the term “ideology” is Destutt de Tracy he defines ideology as the focus on ideas in their purest form for the purpose of achieving a social end (pg. 33). The goal is to almost wipe clean the ideas that others may have in order to regulate and manipulate them for the purpose of achieving a societal end.  There are three elements that make up an ideology. The first element is a societal goal and in this case it would be that all students are learning. A societal goal starts off as something that is good.

The second element is a redefinition of currently held values, norms, and ideas to an extent that they legitimize in advance the practical pursuit of the predetermined end (pg. 33). This would be the idea that there needs to be a way to determine that all students are performing at grade level.  The practical pursuit used to see students’ progresses are standardized tests that are given at the end of a school year. Testing students is generally looked at negatively among students and educators but it’s used because it’s the most convenient measure to evaluate student’s achievement but not the most effective.

This leads into the last element which is selecting the means by which a goal can be effectively achieved (pg. 33). The means used to determine that the goal was effectively achieved as stated previously is evaluated by the standardized tests. All students are expected to score at a proficient level which is supposedly an accurate gage that evaluates their knowledge. This absolute goal has corrupted the education system. The original goal was that all students are learning; the goal has now transformed into are all students able to score proficiency on the standardized test. Teachers are no longer teaching for the students to learn for fun but to learn enough to score proficient on the standardized tests.

Therefore the education system is following an ideology because learning is no longer the absolute goal but the results of the tests scores to determine if a student is learning.

           

The book discussed many contemporary ideologies such as: identity, material progress, and guaranteed security. I believe that the ideology of the education system falls behind the contemporary ideology of material progress (pg.85). Before I go any further what needs to be understood is that schools in the city usually have lower test scores while schools in the suburban middle class areas usually do well on their standardized tests. The question is, “Shouldn’t all students no matter their environment score at state standard?” That’s the goal for the tests is to have all students in the United States scoring at a proficiency level but that scale seems to fluctuate from environment to environment. One of the economic trends mentioned in the book is the poverty paradox; this is an unequal distribution of wealth where the rich get richer and the poor get poorer (pg. 87). This same poverty paradox can be seen through the education system.

            
       As schools increase in wealth they become more academically strong, when schools decrease in wealth they become less academically strong. Wealth is generally generated in direct correlation with the results of these tests. The problem is that instead of improving the poorer schools the wealthier schools are given more money as a sort of incentive for their good test scores. More money is going to give them better teachers, resources, and extracurricular activities. While many city schools are suffering from lack of finances, limited resources, and few extracurricular activities. There is no way to prove that these standardized tests can determine the knowledge of students with so many inconsistences that lie in the way between poorer schools and wealthier schools.

The goal for standardized tests are to determine that students are learning in there school, which is a good goal to have. But, instead of the test being a review of what students should have learned it’s turned into: this is what my students have to know by time they take the test or else what they have learned counts for nothing if it can’t be evaluated through the test. This is unfair to those in a disadvantage school or for students that don’t test well. We’ve become so dedicated to this process of how education works that it would be hard to change. The tests have become an idol because they become our end goal in education; our goal should be that students are learning and that they learn to love learning.
The book offered three guidelines for hope that can counteract this ideology of the education systems current state.  The three guidelines are: the minesweeper, the rope ladder and the periscope (pg. 180). The guideline for hope that I think works best for the scope of education and students learning is the rope ladder guideline.  The rope ladder guideline is a requirement that all people work together to solve one problem. The process requires a step by step technique for example when we redefine our purpose for education this can improve the whole scope of our schools.  Reforming the scope of our education system that is so test based would be very difficult. The process would be a process of trial and error; it would require many people that are committed to this vision. It might even require working with people outside of our country to form a plan.

American schools have a very poor education when being compared with other schools around the world. First, small steps would have to be made this is something that would take years to reform a decade or two. The first step would be to research and go to the schools overseas that are doing well. We would use those schools as model schools. From there we would start with one school district in the United States that is doing poorly and reform it to model the overseas schools. When we reform it to model the overseas school is will be important to keep in mind our own visions and to only take bits and pieces of their system. We need to reclaim the goal of students learning for the enjoyment of learning and this can only be done when we all develop this vision.