Quote:
Originally Posted by KSig RC
What does "teaching to the test" even mean?
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Other people have already answered but I'm adding mine since you asked nicely. :-) Different people may mean different things when they use the phrase "teach to the test," but I have always understood it to refer to situations in which teachers are forced to teach certain things solely because they appear on a standardized test and not necessarily because those are the most important things for students to learn. The best example from personal experience that I can give you is what I saw when I was student teaching in a high school--I had spent ages writing painstakingly detailed lesson plans and they were
good (if I do say so myself) but unfortunately they were never used because I happened to start my placement at that school just before testing time. Instead of teaching what I had planned, which were lessons aligned with our state's core curriculum and standards, I had to spend (or waste, rather) days going over a bunch of PowerPoints that were supposed to review everything that would appear on the state test for my subject area. These presentations were distributed by the school to each teacher, and everyone had to use them. Reviews are against the rules, but somehow this was circumvented as we (the teachers) were instructed not to refer to these PowerPoints as "reviews"--rather, they were "refreshers" or something equally idiotic. I probably still have those CDs around here somewhere, but you wouldn't believe the stuff that was on them; it was the biggest mixed-bag of stuff possible, spanning everything from consumerism to nutrition (my subject area is Family & Consumer Sciences). The students were bored stiff and to be honest, so was I. Instead of going on and teaching my students something they could've used, we had to speed through slide after slide after slide after slide of yawn-inducing facts that they were supposed to be able to spout on demand once that test landed on their desks. Come on.
And
carnation, I'm totally with you! And so is every other educator in my family.