Forget Test-Taking Skills and Get Back to the Basics in Public Schools

Each year since 1926, the public schools of this nation have observed “Black History Week/Month.”

Every year since 1982, Dr. Danny Scarborough, associate professor of literature at San Diego State University, and I have co-chaired the annual Black History Essay Contest presented by the Comprehensive Health Center and the Coast Distributing Co. of San Diego. Each year we have seen this contest grow until it has become the largest contest approved by the schools in San Diego County.

This year the majority of the essays submitted were rejected because they failed to meet our fundamental standards for structure, content, originality, clarity and mechanics--the essential elements of good communication. We noticed that the most creative and original compositions were being written by elementary students. The most difficult to read and understand were those written by students in our secondary schools. And, it should be noted that these essays were written by children of all races and from all over the county.

Over the years, it has become apparent that an increasing percentage of students are lacking the basic writing skills. As the judges discussed this trend recently, we did not blame either the students or teachers. Instead, we discussed the merits of the testing programs within the schools and the emphasis that has been placed on them.

Each year at this time, the newspapers go to great effort to report the results of the tests given during the prior school year. Each year the data presented by the school systems tend to show that students throughout the system are improving, with the exception of a few schools located in the more depressed areas of the system.

But the essays I recently read certainly indicated that schools are not stressing quality and creativity in many of the communication skills.

Test scores may indicate that students are making remarkable progress in the ability to take standardized tests, yet most of our institutions of higher education feel compelled to offer classes for remedial English and math. They continue to state that our public schools are not producing creative students. This should not be.

The basic truth in any testing program is that it points out where improvement is needed or where strengths can be reinforced.

A truly educated person must be creative as well as intelligent. But creativity cannot be measured by standardized tests nor can it be encouraged in classrooms where the instruction is geared to making high scores on a formal testing program.

Too much energy is being spent on the part of the teachers and the students to improve the test scores. Time spent teaching test-taking is time that cannot be spent teaching sentence structure and the other mechanics that previous generations had to learn.

Our school administrators are not being honest about what the standardized tests are accomplishing. The testing programs continue to blame the victims rather than presenting an agenda for reforms in education. The schools should drop this obsession with test-taking and allow their integrity in the field of educational instruction to come through.

If the schools don’t teach youngsters how to become critical thinkers, then their plight is not improved at all.