O.W.L.E's and Objective Testing



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"Ordinary. Wizarding. Level. Examinations. More commonly known as O.W.L.'s. Study hard and you will be rewarded. Fail to do so and the consequences may be… severe." -Dolores Umbridge




Test day- it's what a student thinks (s)he is in school for. I can just picture it now:

Teacher: "Students, why are we learning this?"

Students (in unison minus maybe 3 students): "To do well on the test."

What?!

Although this scene may seem a bit exaggerated, I’m here to vouch that it in fact is not. Monday morning I headed into room 218. After a morning journal to get their little pencils (and more importantly-brains) moving, it was time to introduce the week’s vocabulary words, and the teacher asked why it was important to learn and understand the meaning of these words. All the students thought they had the right answer so hands simultaneously and excitedly rose. However the answer (at least to me) seemed far from correct. Answers varied in word selection but could be summarized to the student response from the example scenario above (“To do well on the test”). So it was very easy to picture that scenario because, well, it happened. While sitting in room 218, my heart kind of broke. I tried to keep my mouth from dropping and keep all the hundred little “why’s” fluttering around my brain from escaping out of my mouth. Have students become that conditioned that everything they learn is for a test? Is this the perfect example of Pavlov’s classic conditioning, and students are just scared of Dolores Umbridge’s “severe” consequences? Whatever happened to knowledge for knowledge’s sake? And my questions would ramble on but I’ll exert some self control.

Okay, I know students must be assessed. I know test are necessary, and not the root of all evil BUT I feel they have been weighted too highly. So, objective tests may be a small branch from the root of all evil. It probably originated from the tree of good and knowledge but after some cross pollination by some political botanists it now grows from one of those roots of evil. (Dramatic? A bit) As Gallagher noted how standardized tests are killing readers, I feel standardized tests (and other sorts of objective testing) are killing students’ desire to learn, or at least warping their desires. Objective testing (when it comes to English), in my own opinion, disadvantages students’ abilities to think critically and creatively. I have always loved literature because there is not one right interpretation, there is not only one right answer. Objective tests take that away. There is only one right answer, and if a student gets it wrong it is assumed that they don’t know or understand.

That then leads to me to the authentic assessment. Where it allows students to run off with creativity but also requires them to think critically. Also it’s not a test, so students can’t say they are learning something “for the test” because, guess what children, there is no test (holla at cho boy). Papers and/or projects are sometimes daunting, but isn’t test day just as scary. I’m sure 5^th (it’s 5^th year right?) Hogwarts students’ stomachs turn endlessly on O.W.L.E day (Slightly Off Topic note: Another one of my complaints about objective testing conditioning. Students are scared of tests? Should they not be confident in what they have learned and now know?) I think authentic assessment, although far from easy to do, relieves some of the nerves of test day. They get to work through their nerves and dig deeper into their thoughts and ideas. I just never want my students to be scared of a Professor Umbridge and the consequences of not doing well on an objective test. I love creative minds- and want my students to use theirs, and feel they can do that best through authentic assessment. And lastly, I never ever ever ever ever (and it’d go on if I had all night) want my students to think they are learning something simply to get the correct answers on a test (I don’t think my heart could handle that much breaking). Yuck.