I found an interesting little article from the Rockingham News Online. The article describes a forum given by school officials to educate parents on standardized tests and other assessments. Definitely an admirable service to provide (I hope they began by explaining how to pronounce New Hampshire's tongue-twisting test acronym, NHEIAP.)
A comment near the end of the article caught my eye:
It is also important not only to focus on the test scores but to challenge the students in new ways.
"There is so much more that is taken into consideration when evaluating a student’s performance, other than test scores," said [curriculum coordinator for kindergarten through eighth grade Elaine] Hume-Howard. "And a lot of these things are the most important when it comes to college applications and recommendations."
Among the important factors that don’t come through in standardized test scores are work ethic, leadership potential, learning style and compassion.
"These things are often more important that test scores," said Hume-Howard. "There has to be a balance between testing and the classroom."
I just thought the description of these factors seemed oddly out of place. Is it really the business of schools to teach compassion? And are compassion and "learning style" really more important than test scores for college applications these days? I have no problem with schools focusing on work ethic, nor on them helping children fulfill their leadership potential, but the way those qualities are presented here, you'd think they were completely independent of test performance. A child with a solid work ethic is going to perform up to their potential on any assessment, including standardized exams.
Posted by kswygert at October 28, 2003 10:56 AM