No more Scantrons!..... I hoped after finishing middle school.
No more Scantrons..... I was convinced after finishing the SATs.
Psyche! *enter the LSATs*
No more Scantrons!!!!!!!! I celebrated after finishing the LSATs.
and just when I thought life could no longer throw standardized testing at me...
One of my post-grad job applications for a civil service job indicated, TESTING, 100 multiple choice questions,
Are you serious? You're giving me premature gray hairs, DOE.
What I don't understand is how it became a consensus that standardized testing was a sole indicator of academic achievement. In Diane Ravitch's book, The Death and Life of the Great American School System: How Testing and Choice are Undermining Education, the debate focuses on what students are learning versus how well students are learning and the means to an end aspect of it.
She states,
"We can immediately see that the kind of student who is 'learning-oriented' -- the student whose goal is to understand and who is thinking about what she is doing -- is likely to enjoy school. But the flip side is that her classmate, who is mostly concerned with being a top performer, is probably a lot less eager. . . . But a genuine interest in the task -- or excitement about the whole idea of learning -- often begins to evaporate as soon as achievement becomes the main point" (Ravitch, 28).
Going back to the civil service exam, it's disconcerting that one's employment for a position that serves the public good virtually rests entirely on the score received on the exam . . . forget about more redeeming qualities that one would think take precedence for a job that requires a genuine interaction with the public. While the exam theoretically ensures that individuals receive job offers based on merit, I want to know why merit is only being measured solely with an assessment. Going through the list of current job openings in PA, I see public safety specialists, education specialists, civil engineers, criminal justice system planners, social workers, pharmacists... the list goes on with positions requiring a great deal of competency.
Applying Ravitch's point regarding learning-oriented versus performance-oriented individuals, I can't help but wonder how this phenomenon that has made its way into the professional world, long after those years of competing with the teacher's/professor's pet, affects our society. I personally have a very specific interest in being a catalyst of social change within the child welfare/juvenile justice sector. This passion is what constantly has me yearning for more knowledge (do I really have to graduate?...) and I think that while a learning-oriented individual would also be performance-oriented to an extent, I feel as though it is unfair that I am up against hundreds to thousands of applicants for a position that I KNOW I would excel at and with one higher score, some person from who-knows-where that simply needs a job could take that away from me. I'm not arguing that I am the most qualified simply because it is something I enjoy, nor am I arguing that competency is not as important, but I am arguing that once achievement becomes an isolated goal, it changes ones' performance entirely.
My past internship with the Department of Social Services involved a handful of workers who obviously had the competency for the job, but nothing else -- no apparent desire to be there, no "oompf" to anything they did/said. I don't know about anyone else, but I wasn't buying what they were putting down (does anyone want a refund?...). The dynamic was very one-dimensional to say the least. It is my opinion (and I'm sure of most other people) that any position that provides services for the public should also have an equally balanced level of passion and desire to learn more in addition to competence. If you are a social worker working with a child, they KNOW if you really don't want to be there. They KNOW if you're simply "doing your job." People as a general rule, are more perceptive to these things than we're willing to admit and any progress a professional has made with a client can be instantly nullified if there is no genuine interest behind it.
With that being said (and for the sake of not dragging this out even more), how do we measure merit that incorporates the learning process? Not only in the classrooms, but in the real world? Anyone can ace a test, but whether or not they aced it with the sole purpose of achievement versus acing it with the purpose of learning it makes all of the difference.
She states,
"We can immediately see that the kind of student who is 'learning-oriented' -- the student whose goal is to understand and who is thinking about what she is doing -- is likely to enjoy school. But the flip side is that her classmate, who is mostly concerned with being a top performer, is probably a lot less eager. . . . But a genuine interest in the task -- or excitement about the whole idea of learning -- often begins to evaporate as soon as achievement becomes the main point" (Ravitch, 28).
Going back to the civil service exam, it's disconcerting that one's employment for a position that serves the public good virtually rests entirely on the score received on the exam . . . forget about more redeeming qualities that one would think take precedence for a job that requires a genuine interaction with the public. While the exam theoretically ensures that individuals receive job offers based on merit, I want to know why merit is only being measured solely with an assessment. Going through the list of current job openings in PA, I see public safety specialists, education specialists, civil engineers, criminal justice system planners, social workers, pharmacists... the list goes on with positions requiring a great deal of competency.
Applying Ravitch's point regarding learning-oriented versus performance-oriented individuals, I can't help but wonder how this phenomenon that has made its way into the professional world, long after those years of competing with the teacher's/professor's pet, affects our society. I personally have a very specific interest in being a catalyst of social change within the child welfare/juvenile justice sector. This passion is what constantly has me yearning for more knowledge (do I really have to graduate?...) and I think that while a learning-oriented individual would also be performance-oriented to an extent, I feel as though it is unfair that I am up against hundreds to thousands of applicants for a position that I KNOW I would excel at and with one higher score, some person from who-knows-where that simply needs a job could take that away from me. I'm not arguing that I am the most qualified simply because it is something I enjoy, nor am I arguing that competency is not as important, but I am arguing that once achievement becomes an isolated goal, it changes ones' performance entirely.
My past internship with the Department of Social Services involved a handful of workers who obviously had the competency for the job, but nothing else -- no apparent desire to be there, no "oompf" to anything they did/said. I don't know about anyone else, but I wasn't buying what they were putting down (does anyone want a refund?...). The dynamic was very one-dimensional to say the least. It is my opinion (and I'm sure of most other people) that any position that provides services for the public should also have an equally balanced level of passion and desire to learn more in addition to competence. If you are a social worker working with a child, they KNOW if you really don't want to be there. They KNOW if you're simply "doing your job." People as a general rule, are more perceptive to these things than we're willing to admit and any progress a professional has made with a client can be instantly nullified if there is no genuine interest behind it.
With that being said (and for the sake of not dragging this out even more), how do we measure merit that incorporates the learning process? Not only in the classrooms, but in the real world? Anyone can ace a test, but whether or not they aced it with the sole purpose of achievement versus acing it with the purpose of learning it makes all of the difference.
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