The Bush administration is pushing new changes in colleges that would fundamentally alter the college experience. (
Panel's Report Urges Higher Education Shake-Up)
The panel urges three fundamental recommendations:
* Standardized testing across colleges
* Declaring college costs should not increase more quickly than median family income and
* Calling for increased Pell grants.
The final recommendation is an excellent suggestion, but the other two are dangerous and must be opposed. I will write about finances in a later diary, but today I want to look at how the push for standardized testing is an attack on critical thinking and analysis, which could, ultimately, create a less-engaged and informed citizenry.
What's Wrong with Standardized Testing?
Standardized testing simply does not adequately measure knowledge in the way we use it. A good test challenges students and doesn't demand 'right' and 'wrong' answers. Right and wrong are things a student memorizes, but critical thinking, which we have already relegated to college, doesn't produce right and wrong. Critical thinking produces arguments and nuances.
Let me give you an example from the class I taught this summer. A multiple choice test would have taken me 20 minutes to grade, but I chose to spend 20 minutes per student in order to try and challenge them and push their knowledge and skills.
A week before the test, I told them it would be on some aspect of the First Amendment and they could bring in 3 articles to the test. I then gave them another three articles on flag burning (one on background, one pro-Amendment from the National Review and one against the amendment by Bob Kerry). They had three hours to read the articles, formulate an opinion and write a motivated sequence keyword outline. By doing this, I tested their research skills, their reading, their analysis, their organization and their writing. Requiring a "motivated sequence" outline and having them label specific types of reasoning and parts of the outline created an objective, right/wrong part of the test. However, you could never test whether a student could develop inductive reasoning with a standardized test, only whether they could identify it. A standardized test would encourage students to memorize and regurgitate rather than question, analyze and support.
How Will This Affect Colleges?
If the ranking and funding of a college depends on how well students do on standardized tests, colleges will push those skills out of necessity. The US News and World Report rankings fundamentally affect colleges. For example, there is a push to have many classes of 20 or 50 each and then huge lectures, because US News ranks on class sizes of 20 or 50. So a class of 24 is treated the same as a class of 49, even though the learning experience would be very different. Many schools will be picky about first-year students, but let any transfer student in who can pay, because the ranking aren't affected by transfer students. Student/faculty ratio is skewed by redefining athletic coaches as 'faculty.' Some schools proactively reject some of the best students who they believe would never attend their school to get their selectivity numbers up. The list continues.
If standardized testing is implemented, schools will have to teach to the test. This is not some nefarious plan; colleges compete to attract students and students know the reputation of college will affect their future employment prospects. Therefore, it will fundamentally alter the curriculum and push critical thinking and analysis away from the undergraduate curriculum and into graduate school.
What Would This Ultimately Mean?
This is probably not part of some conspiracy, but it reflects the values and ideology of the current administration. Ultimately, it would create citizens who accept what they are told, value simple answer and are less likely to question. It would reduce the percentage of people who analyze, question what they are told and think for themselves.
This attack is happening at the same time that "Academic Bill of Rights" bills are being pushed throughout the country. (For more on ABOR see my diary: "Academic Bill of Rights: Why I Care"). In other words, this is another front on the attack on higher education in this country.
What Can We Do About It?
Today--call your national representatives.
In the long term, we need to get involved with what is happening on both the state and the national level. Colleges are absolutely essential to a well-informed citizenry and the right-wing attacks on colleges are part of a long-term plan to realign national priorities.