The Philosophical Presuppositions...
One must ask a series of preliminary questions and offer reasonable answers to them in order to successfully answer the question of testing. For example, one should ask what one believes about human nature, and how that impacts testing. If a person believed, for example, that people are basically good and only lack knowledge, then of course that would change everything about the testing process. Testing would be more about curing ignorance than about discipline or consequences.
Related to this, one wonders whether testing is a reflective and revelatory process primarily or a learning process primarily.
To what extent should students adjust to the demands of their teachers or vice versa? And why?
If students are given every reasonable opportunity to learn and most do not learn, can that be the fault of the students alone? Is such a thing even possible? Many times in education, when a test is given, and a majority of students miss a question, there is an assumption that the problem was with the test. But surely it is at least possible that the problem is with the majority who didn't take ownership of the learning process. What are we to make of these questions?
Do tests really provide the best appraisal of learning?
If individual learning styles are different, should each test be different, catered to the needs of the individual student? And how can this be done with "mass produced" education? Perhaps if education would take seriously the individual needs of each student, then there would be no standardized tests like the SAT, or even the bar exam.
It seems to me that there will be wild differences of opinion with respect to most if not all of these questions. And thus it falls on the shoulders of individual educators to provide the rationale for their process.
What follows will be my philosophy on this...
1. The student is to adjust to me, not the other way round (at least on balance).
One reason I test the way that I do is because I insist that the student reach to the level of my demands. Surely professors and employers will expect the same thing. If I had no other rationale for this testing procedure, then this would be enough.
I am the one in this classroom who knows the content, and I know what mastery looks like. It is not just that students, and even administrators in many cases, don't know the subject (one would presumably expect that); they don't even know how to know it or how to assess when they know it as a high school philosophy student should know it.
Education requires an act of trust. One must see the teacher as an authority. This of course can be abused, but there is a risk in education and in the hiring process. One has to assume that the teacher, especially those with a respectable track record, should be given the latitude to teach, and consequently that there is no reason to begin with a critical spirit on this issue.
2. I want a comprehensive and grooved kind of learning, and not mere compartmentalized steps of learning.
Another reason for doing two long and demanding tests rather than several smaller ones that might scaffold to the bigger tests is that the larger exam demands more of a student in terms of long term integration and synthesis of the information. I cannot accept the partitioning of knowledge that comes with multiple major assessments, but more importantly, I cannot accept the grade buffering. Since students are motivated by threat of punishment or promise of reward, they think in terms of grades. If there are several tests, then the test category is diluted. Failure in the comprehensive exams will be much more costly without multiple exams, and I want it to be costly.
Perhaps one could suggest that I should do more to help students absorb all the content for these exams. What usually accompanies this is a stern reminder about the nature of a college class versus a high school class. Ok. Let me list what I do to help students learn the material required in the comprehensive exams:
a. I clearly communicate that a large portion of the grade is based on comprehensive testing. Students are not surprised by this, at least not in terms of basic knowledge of the expectations.
b. I coach students on how to study for my exams.
c. I upload the teacher notes for the course during review season.
d. I provide the full lectures for the core material via my blog.
e. I give little homework.
f. I counsel students that the homework for the class is preparation for the exams.
g. I give detailed study guides for my exams.
h. I conduct a review game in which nearly all questions for the exam are reviewed.
i. Note: There are various other assignments that can buoy the grade, but no student will earn an A if he or she does poorly on the exams, and will likely struggle to pass. In many college classes, they would simply not pass if they failed a major assessment.
So then the question is a simple one: If a student fails a test, or even if several students fail a test, given all of these opportunities listed above, what can we conclude? One conclusion is that my way is not working. Another conclusion is that some students are not working my way! It really is very simple. Students that learn comprehensively earn A's. Students that don't learn that way struggle.
Jesus himself gave us this example. Yes, he came to people where they were and spoke their language, but not to stay there! Did he adjust to them in the sense that he adopted their wisdom and their morals and their standards of life? No! He lowered himself so that he might raise them up. In fact, he promised to give them help to no other end. They were to "be perfect as my heavenly father is perfect!"
So, yes, within reason we adjust to our students. We meet them where they are, but only so that we can lead them elsewhere. Along the way, some students will find that the journey is too demanding for them and they will follow another path. We must let them go. Jesus let the Rich Young Ruler pursue his folly. Even Jesus gave tests that young people failed! Please notice that Jesus didn't fail them; he only allowed them to fail.
3. It is not as easy to cheat.
Another reason to do larger exams is that it is practically impossible to cheat, either through memory or looking or cheat sheets or any other way. Of course I don't assume that students will cheat, but that gets us back to the philosophical questions already raised. If a student can more easily cheat, and he is another depraved human being, will he?
4. College tests like I do, and not in the scaffolded manner of many high school teachers.
Even before college, the SAT is an experience in the kind of testing I do. The only assessment process that approximates the SAT is perhaps the PSAT, given the junior year of high school. But these are tests that are meant to assess for long term absorption of vocabulary, logic, reading, math, etc. There are no steps to this test because the entire academic journey is the series of self-managed steps to it. Even if a student retests, the only way he can improve is if he manages to master the skills required on his own before the next test.
Why do college professors test as they do? Some of it is simple logistics. It is quite difficult to test hundreds of students multiple times in a semester. But it is also because they expect that young men and women should be able to process and maintain a lot of information over a long period of time without multiple intervening steps managed by the professor. If the student requires the multiple intervening steps, then he can manage those steps on his own.
Perhaps another way of looking at this is simply to suggest that both models acknowledge that a person arrives at a particular skill through a process. The college professor demands that not only the skill be scaled by the student, but also that he scale the process by which the skill is scaled. The professor may still provide the resources for the process, but the student must manage his way through it. Many in high school education today want the process to be managed for the student so that it is guaranteed that he will learn the skill. What never seems to occur to these teachers is that by doing things that way, we teach not just the skill but also a particular process is acquiring skills. In other words, we teach the student that he can expect others to lead him though all the necessary steps in the learning process. That surely doesn't seem to reflect either the college world or the professional world.
Now one may respond by saying that, "these students are not in college yet." That is true, and that is why I do the various things listed under #3. No college professor is going to play a review game with students or give the kinds of study guides that I give. Just as parents must lead a child from external discipline to internal discipline, so must teachers.
5. Life tests like I do.
In life, we are not given highly managed, "see how you are doing," scaffolded steps to success all the time. I think of my first teaching job, and the overwhelming "sink or swim" feeling involved. Yes, my education somewhat prepared me for this, but there was still a leap that forced me into self-reliance (including relying on myself to seek out the help I needed). When it comes to a first job, giving a speech, playing a demanding opponent in sports, suffering, doing something inventive, or the birth of a first child, life often merely tests how we have managed the process of our own preparation rather than giving us indefinite safe experiments in preparation. Real life pushes people. It is risky and demands a response of attentive urgency. My testing procedure helps students see this.
6. I still affirm that failure must be a live option in education, because it is deeply instructive.
Life involves risk, especially the risk of failure. Much of the educational world is moving away from even the possibility of failure. Private schools are obviously tempted in this regard, because, after all, why would parents want to pay for a kid to go off to a difficult school and fail his classes? Perhaps that is exactly what parents should pay for if they want to teach their children!
I maintain that no student will ever fail my exams unless one of two realities obtains: One, he is not capable; or two, he did not work as he ought to have worked. And both are valuable things to learn.
On the first point, some think I am harsh. But this has always puzzled me. Why believe that simply everyone will be capable of performing well in high school philosophy? Once a baseball coach accused me of failing my students because I wasn't finding a way for all of them to succeed. I took the easy way out with my exams, he said. He boasted that a good baseball coach can get the most out of all of his players, and has to use the unique talents of all to form a team. I asked him if he cut players before the season began, and that question abruptly ended the conversation. All I am suggesting is that failing grades are sometimes our way of cutting students. Hopefully we don't have to do it often, but it should always be an option. Why? Because it educates!
7. It forces students to manage their time.
Recently students asked me to postpone my mid-term because I had originally scheduled it during "Powder Puff" week. That week makes academics a mere distraction from real school life (sarcasm font). So I pushed the exam back one week. Some students still failed, and in some cases miserably. Now again, the fact that the exam is extensive requires a student to manage his study time to be progressively building towards a full integrated knowledge of the course material. If a student takes the approach that most do, which is to "cram" at the last minute, then he or she will fail.
So, the question is, why did those students fail, when I had given them an extra week to study for the exam? Do I even need to answer the question? They hadn't learned material from week 1 in week 1, and then again in week 2, and in week 3, all the way through to week 9. They know, in theory, that what they do every week will affect what they know in week 9, but they don't act like they know it. And that requires testing to help them see it clearly. But at least their Powder Puff cheer won, and no one can take that away from them.
8. I have 20 years experience of this working for my unique talents and style.
When I say that it "works," what I mean is that it works in the ways that I want it to work. It exposes students who are not capable (a tiny minority) and those that will not do the work (a larger minority). And it also engraves certain truths on those that engage in my process. It has a lingering affect beyond this class for those students who do things my way. And finally, my process deeply prepares my committed students for the rigors of college life. Time and again, I receive testimony that my class is one of those classes in school that prepared them well for even the most demanding of colleges. I have to believe that the rigorous nature of my exams has something to do with that.
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