Newsgroup: it.istruzione.scuola
Titolo: docenti di Chicago scioperano contro i test

Vale la pena di leggere quest'articolo (mi dispiace di non avere tempo 
per tradurlo integralmente):
http://www.marvinmarshall.com/chicago-teachers-strike-and-standardized-test-for-evaluation/
 
 
Chicago Teachers Strike and Standardized Tests
 
Both the media and the critics of the current Chicago teachers strike 
are paying little attention to the primary reason that the teachers are 
not in their classrooms: Recent legislation passed by the Illinois 
legislature requires that scores from standardized tests be used for 
teacher accountability and performance.
To someone not in the education field, this mandate may seem reasonable. 
However, most people don’t realize that standardized tests were never 
designed to measure learning. Standardized tests were designed so that 
half of the test takers will fall below the 50 percent line. If 50 
percent of students “fail” by design, how can these types of tests be 
justified for teacher accountability? Under this ruling, teachers will 
be judged and evaluated on a measure that is not valid for this purpose. 
Additionally, standardized tests are not reliable because they 
oftentimes do not get consistent results. (The same students taking the 
same test score differently.)
Realize, too, that many bright people simply don’t do well on tests. I 
know several respected adults who rarely demonstrate their competence, 
wisdom, or skill on a measurement instrument. The same goes for many 
students.
The problem is that too often educators and legislators attempt to make 
the social sciences have the same precision as the natural sciences. My 
post graduate experience as an economics major demonstrated this 
attempt. Economics is not a science—nor can it ever be. In contrast to 
the natural sciences, every measurement instrument in the social 
sciences is SUBJECTIVE. Yet we succumb to the illusion that only that 
which can be quantified can be true or valid.
Let’s be clear: I am not against accountability. I am against those 
instruments that are not valid or reliable, and this is the case of 
using standardized tests to measure teacher effectiveness especially 
when a teacher’s influence becomes known more in the future than in the 
present.
In short, using standardized tests to measure local teacher performance 
is invalid for at least three reasons:
(1) Standardized tests do not match their questions with the local 
curriculum or what has been taught,
(2) Standardized tests measure much of what students know when they 
first entered the classroom—especially in low vs. high socioeconomic 
areas—rather than what has been taught, and
(3) If the majority of students have learned what has been taught, then 
that information will not appear on a standardized test because it does 
not discriminate enough.
Standardized tests, by their very nature, are designed to discriminate, 
not to assess learning. As W. Edwards Deming (the international expert 
who brought both improved quality and lower costs to the workplace) 
said, “THE MOST IMPORTANT INFORMATION CANNOT BE MEASURED; THE VARIABLES 
ARE TOO GREAT.”
We should listen to the cowboy who said, “When the horse is dead, 
dismount.” Educators and legislators should take this wisdom as it 
applies to using standardized tests for learning accountability and for 
teacher evaluation. We should be using norm or criterion referenced 
measurements instead.
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Soviet_Mario - (aka Gatto_Vizzato)