テストがなくなる日は近い？

アメリカの議会で、No Child Left Behindに代わる教育方針の法律が話し合われるようです。標準テストを基に補助金の額が変わるという方針がどうなるのか、注目ですね。それに合わせてのインタビューがPBS Newshourにありました。

Is ‘The Test’ failing American schools?
January 22, 2015 at 6:05 PM EST

GWEN IFILL: As Congress begins to tackle a new federal education law that would succeed No Child Left Behind, one of the major dividing lines is already clear. What is the proper role and use of testing?
It’s a question that has long touched a raw nerve among parents and educators.
A new book explores that controversy and testing’s possible future.
Hari Sreenivasan has our conversation from our New York studios.
HARI SREENIVASAN: On the one hand, parents know their children’s talents can’t be quantified by multiple choice tests. At the same time, they often want their children to do well on high-stakes exams.
A new book explores those issues and a growing backlash against testing in many circles. It’s called “The Test: Why Our Schools are Obsessed with Standardized Testing, But You Don’t Have to Be.”

テストの成績だけが全てではないと言ったおきまりの話もされています。継続して取り組む力perseveranceが重要という話も出ています。

HARI SREENIVASAN: There’s also this philosophical question on, is testing a good indicator of future outcomes, right?
So colleges are basing their entrance of certain applicants on two things, usually, a grade-point average and an SAT or ACT test score, maybe some other extracurricular activities. But they’re saying based on that, I kind of have an idea of whether you will do well here and then on in the working world.
ANYA KAMENETZ: Right.
Well, one of the most interesting kind of emerging factors in the realm of assessment is the idea that half or more of what we need for success is not determined by academic measures at all. It’s these noncognitive measures, right, grit, perseverance, right?
And these things actually can be — they can be assessed through surveys, low-stakes surveys. And the types of surveys that these organizations are doing, in fact, are quite predictive of people’s success later on in life, even more so than GPA alone.

学校が標準テストでスコアを上げるためだけの場になってしまっている現状批判はこれまでにも数多く出版されています。どの国でもこういう問題は抱えているようです。日本でもTOEICやTOEFLが導入されたら、このような本が多く出るのでしょうね。

Don’t Teach to the Test
Journalist Ron Berler explains how standardized testing is preventing students from learning.
By Brooke Berger
April 11, 2013 | 10:30 a.m. EDT

What is the effect of excessive testing on elementary-school curriculums?
From September until Christmas vacation, [Brookside] was like any school you would imagine. Then, once they got back from Christmas break, for the next nine weeks until testing began, it was a different animal. What they did was drop their curriculum, drop their texts, and instead study exclusively from a standardized-test prep book. Kids weren't getting a liberal arts education, but prepping to a very narrowly drawn standardized test in primarily language arts and math. Because they were interested in passing the test more than anything else, for that 22 percent of the school year, they taught primarily to the broad middle section of kids that were going to pass. Plus, the school went and reached out to those kids who they thought were on the cusp of possibly passing. So who gets left out? The kids at the bottom and the kids at the top.



もちろんこれらは忘れてはならないとても重要な話ですが、今回の件でYutaが個人的に興味深く感じたのは、e-learningが発達することで定期テストが不要になるとピアソンやETSも考えているというI talked to chief research scientist at Pearson and ETS who said you know, we believe that this invisible integrated assessment is really the future because stopping and testing is this clunky kind of a way of going about it.ところです。現在のテストをstopping and testingと表現しているところが面白いですね。


The Past, Present And Future Of High-Stakes Testing
JANUARY 22, 2015 3:39 AM ET

INSKEEP: So now, Anya, you're talking about something that will remind people of what Google does with your search data or Facebook might do with information that it gathers on you. It's just quietly gathering information about you and acting accordingly, and you never even know the information is being gathered about you.
KAMENETZ: Well, exactly. So on an individual basis every single day, more and more students in schools are using software to learn. And while the software is, you know, giving them the math problems or the English problems to answer, it's getting incredibly fine-grained information about the students' performances, how they think, how they approach difficult problems. Do they try really hard? Do they give up easily? And many people who, you know, run testing companies and software companies believe that that kind of information could replace the activity of stopping and testing.
INSKEEP: Wait, even the people who are making money creating the tests think there might be a better way to measure school performance than their own tests?
KAMENETZ: Oh, absolutely. I mean, I talked to chief research scientist at Pearson and ETS who said you know, we believe that this invisible integrated assessment is really the future because stopping and testing is this clunky kind of a way of going about it.
Businesses in the 1970s used to have to shut down at the end of the year and do inventory for three weeks. And that's kind of how we do it in schools today. We spend eight days taking tests. And so how could schools possibly use data in that same sort of agile, just-in-time way?

最近、iPhoneに標準装備されていたヘルスケアのアプリを見てビックリしたのですが、歩数や上った階数などがデータとしてすでに集計されているのですね。（今頃の話ですみません。。。）同じように教育ソフトウェアで学習するのが普通になると、日頃の集計データで成績は測定できるようになるので、現在のTOEICのようなstopping and testingは不要になるというのです。このヘルスケアアプリを考えると、遠い将来の話ではないと感じてしまいました。

標準テストに代わるものにどういう評価方法があるのか詳しく説明している記事もあるので、興味のある方はNPRの記事がオススメです。