Ignorance is Strength

This article is about elementary school teacher Kathryn Sihota, who refused to give her 3rd graders a standardized reading test. She refused to give this test based on her own personal beliefs about student evaluation. Her community has rallied behind her in support of her decision. Teachers and parents are backing up Kathryn’s decision with many positive comments. One of her colleges went so far as to say that “Kathryn represents the best in teaching… when teachers put their children before themselves.” I have to agree that this is a gutsy move that shows a lot of care and concern for her students.
Kathryn made this comment in response to the testing:

“Everything we know about young children tell us that in order to assess a child effectively, we must know much more about him or her than can be revealed by a test,” she said.

I could not agree with her more, how many third graders do you know who are very effective test takers. And on top of that how many are really interested in the test when they are taking it. They are too young to understand that this test is affecting them and their future lives. It’s unfair to base decisions about their future educational career based on a test in third grade. I feel that only the way to effectively evaluate student capabilities. One of the parents that was interviewed shares my view as well, she says, “I am not willing to trust someone I’ve never met make an assessment of my child that could affect her future in the higher grades.” This couldn’t be more true, especially at such a young age. The children haven’t been trained in test taking to the point where the tests can effectively evaluate what they are capable of.

I feel that this personal evaluation of a students capabilities will almost always be more reliable than a test. When we rely solely on tests we are doing our students an injustice. We are leaving them in the hands of people who don’t know them and their personal abilities and grade them solely on some bubbled in answers. Their is much more to student evaluation than this. What if for every writing assessment we relied on a person who had never met our student. How would we feel having a complete stranger having the only say in where that student went in school. I would feel horrible about it, because I would like to think that I knew that students capabilities far more than the distant test maker. What if a particular student merely had a bad day, are we willing to put him on the slow track for four years of high-school because of one day. I’m not ready to do that.

This situation almost happened to me in my high-school career. I was taking a placement exam for a private high-school and the results of this test showed that I was to be put in a pre-algebra class. This was outrageous, mainly because I had taken algebra already, there was no reason why I should be put in a pre-algebra course. I went home upset by the news. But later that week I got a call from the 8th grade algebra teacher, Mr. Hilken, saying that there was no reason that I should be in that pre-algebra class. So I took his advice and went on the get an A in my high-school class and was than placed in honors geometry. It pisses me off to think about what would have happened to my high-school career and my education if Mr. Hilken hadn’t stepped in.

The thing is is that Mr. Hilken actually knew me. He knew what I was capable of, and so he made a much more accurate evaluation than any test could have done. I hope that I can have some say in the evaluation of my students reading and writing. I am not content with leaving them in the hands of people who neither know of care about them.

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