I'm sure that quite by accident, George W. Bush nailed the essential question (quoted in the title) that should be used to evaluate any educational system. Of course, Bush and the Republicans went on to impose a system (No Child Left Behind or NCLB) that has little to do with children learning.
It's no surprise then to see criticisms of the current state of education and educational methods on dKos. What amazes me (actually infuriates me at times) is that the criticism is not of NCLB, but is misdirected at things like standardized testing or objectives-based curriculum or, from my point of view, lacks basic comprehension of what learning (not education, please) is all about.
Read on for my likely-to-be unpopular views (and admittedly bad attitude) about learning and education.
I can't begin without defining learning:
Learning is a change is human disposition or capability, which can be retained, and which is not simply ascirbable to the process of growth. The kind of change called learning exhibits itself as a change in behavior, and the inference of learning is made by comparing what behavior was possible before the individual was placed in a "learning situation" and what behavior can be exhibited after such treatment.
(Emphasis in original)
Robert M. Gagne The Conditions of Learning, 2nd Ed. 1970 Holt, Rinehart and Winston, p3
Shorter Gagne: Learning is a change in behavior.
That has a lot of implications. First, all learning is observable, and being observable is measureable. If you can measure it or observe it, you can describe what is to be measured or observed.
Second, learning is something that happens to the learner; moreover, learning requires the active participation of the learner. If the learning isn't achieved, the deficit ultimately belongs to the learner, not the teacher or school system.
The first implication addresses those commenters who feel that not all learning can be tested, or those who believe that some important learning is only observable at the level of neural physiology (when someone can identify the neural configuration that corresponds to the ability to read or do math, PET scans will be an acceptable substitute for measuring learning using some kind of testing - but not before).
The second implication addresses those commenters who feel the government or school systems or teachers or poor pedagogy or parents are responsible for deficits in learning. This isn't to absolve any of those entities of their numerous failings, but ultimately the person who is illiterate, can't manage their money, doesn't understand the physiological basis of pregnancy or STDs, or fails to learn in any other area will suffer the consequences of their ignorance. In that sense, the learner, and no one else, is always ultimately responsible for not learning.
So what of testing, particularly standardized testing? Here's one educator's point of view:
Let us suppose, for example, that the teacher wishes to teach to a child the two colours, red and blue. She desires to attract the attention of the child to the object. She says, therefore, "Look at this." Then, in order to teach the colours, she says, showing him the red, "This is red," raising her voice a little and pronouncing the word "red" slowly and clearly; then showing him the other colour, "This is blue." In order to make sure that the child has understood, she says to him, "Give me the red,"-"Give me the blue." Let us suppose that the child in following this last direction makes a mistake. The teacher does not repeat and does not insist; she smiles, gives the child a friendly caress and takes away the colours.
Maria Montessori The Montessori Method 1912 Frederick A. Stokes Co. p109
Did you catch the testing in that quote? Here it is: In order to make sure that the child has understood, she says to him, "Give me the red,"-"Give me the blue."
In other words, can the child exhibit the desired behavior or not? <sarcasm>But of course this isn't standardized testing!</sarcasm>. Well, if you follow Ms. Montessori's guidelines, it's hard to see how she doesn't believe in both standardized curriculum and testing, at least on some level. In fact what the Montessori Method does, and one of the reasons it is a good system (I've encouraged my nieces to put their kids in Montessori schools, which they've done) is that it brings standardization and evaluation of learning objectives down to the individual learning quantum. (It does a lot of other things too, like not using testing to foster competition or a sense of failure, and a lot of other stuff)
Presumably, some people believe that standardized testing has to be something like the Iowa Basic Skills Test or SAT - all multiple choice or True/False questions. All "standardized testing" means is that everybody uses the same test to evaluate a particular piece of learning.
Learning comes in a lot of different flavors. One breakdown comes from Bloom's Taxonomy. Bloom identifies the hierarchical types of learning objectives as: knowledge, comprehension, application, analysis, synthesis, and evaluation. I'm too lazy to look up how Bloom views this hierarchy, but my view is that you can't move up to a new level until you have a foundation in the lower levels. Evaluation ("critical thinking") isn't possible without having some basic knowledge, comprehension, etc.
All six of these levels are testable. Knowledge is obvious: "Who was the first President of the United States?" Critical thinking or evaluation isn't much harder: "Who was the best President of the United States? Why?" If you can't test for it, you can't know if a type of learning has occurred. If you're arguing that one method of teaching produces critical thinking and another doesn't, you're assuming you can observe (and therefore measure and therefore test for) critical thinking. If everybody tests for critical thinking in the same way, it's a standardized test.
Some of the other criticisms: What about "teaching to the test"? Re-read the Montessori quote above and then convince me the Montessori teacher isn't teaching to the test - all good teachers do when the test and curriculum (learning objectives) are in sync, as they should be.
What about those "bean-counters" (as one comment put it) who insist on turning learning into lists of low-level bullet points? The "low-level" bullet points just demonstrate a lack of imagination. Here's a behavorial objective (sometimes called a "competency") for the Montessori example above:
The student will be able to correctly identify the colors red and blue
That certainly sounds harmful to the learning process. How about for higher levels of learning?
I've never done a lot of objectives for critical thinking (I taught electronics), but the level below that is synthesis:
The student will be able to design a two-stage transistor amplifier with feedback to specifications.
Actually to be correct, the "specifications" would be spelled out, but that wasn't my course (I taught the pre-requisite course). This was in a two-year tech program, and better than 90% of students could accomplish it. I know graduate engineers from good schools who couldn't do that (the example is obsolete now).
In my ideal educational environment, before the course starts there is a set of behavioral objectives for each week of the course (preferably standardized). The teacher teaches to those behavioral objectives, assigns corresponding homework (when appropriate), writes tests (or even better uses a standardized test) that measure ability to perform the behavioral objectives, and sets a level of competency with respect to the behavioral objectives that determines pass/fail status. Good teachers (with well-designed and well-paced curricula and allowed sufficient time on task) will complete the required objectives in a timely enough fashion to allow for a) remediation (which I didn't have to do) and b) interjection of material which challenges capable students to go beyond (in terms of content or learning level) the minimum behavioral objectives used to establish competency.
I taught that way for 6 years (actually, was required to) and it's an amazingly workable system at the post-secondary level. Some of my students went on to management positions, started their own successful businesses or went on to get engineering degrees from real universities. Some of the best students tested at below average IQ (I found out after the fact, and not quite legally). I was not by any stretch of the imagination the best instructor in the department - probably somewhere in the top third.
To summarize - I'm advocating standardization of both minimum content and testing (but not teaching methods or "enrichment" or whatever you want to call it). I expect a lot of people who teach primary and secondary school will disagree, and since I have no experience in those areas, they may even be right.
Oh yeah - NCLB. If you want to attack NCLB, don't go after the standardization, which is a good thing if done right, or things like teacher and school accountability, which are also good things but handled miserably by NCLB.
If you want to criticize NCLB and don't have a lot of direct experience with it, then the obvious first step is to learn something about it before trying out all those higher level "critical thinking" skills.