Canada's developing a "fascination" for test scores
A couple of years back, I was thinking about moving to Canada. Just entertaining the thought, mind you (yes, of course a man was involved). However, I noticed that the testing bug didn't seem to have bitten our northern neighbors, and as such jobs were not plentiful. For that reason, among others, I stayed put.
Now, however, it appears that testing is all the rage - but should the tests be used to rank Canadian schools? That's the question an international group of high school principals will be discussing at this week's Ottawa meeting of the Canadian Association of Principals:
Although education is under provincial jurisdiction, demand for school rankings - like the reports put out annually by the Institut Économique de Montréal - has sparked a fascination with test scores across the country.
"It's like spelling, which is a hot issue for parents because, like math, either it's right or it's wrong," said John Ryan, the association's Quebec representative, and principal of Michelangelo elementary school in Montreal's Rivière des Prairies district. "They're looking for something concrete."
The principals agree that as an evaluation tool, such exams aren't a bad thing, if they're constructive. The problem, [CAP President Hugh] Fraser said, is that often schools don't get test results until months after the exam is taken and the kids have moved on to the next grade level."What use is that?" he asked.
Among the principals' recommendations:- Exam results should be made available more quickly. - Exams shouldn't test simple memorization of facts.
I agree with the first recommendation, but unlike the principals, I think there's nothing wrong with having memorization items on a school exam. Much of the "higher-order thinking skills" that teachers praise aren't feasible unless students have memorized the basic skills. It's difficult for a student to master advanced, creative mathematical thinking unless they've previously mastered the "boring" nuts-and-bolts of mathematical operations. The more advanced the student, the more open-ended the test items can be - but the younger kids should indeed be memorizing facts, as many of them as possible, and should be tested on those facts.