The Real Cheating Scandal Occurs Each Year At Every School in America

“The real cheating scandal that has been going on for years is that kids are being cheated out of meaningful learning by focusing on test scores. Standardized tests like the CRCT measure what matters least. . . Standardized tests are lousy measures of thinking. They assess some combination of (a) family wealth and (b) how much time has been diverted from real learning in order to make kids better at taking tests. Many smart kids, terrific teachers, and exciting schools have lousy test scores. Many not-so-smart kids, mediocre teachers, and awful schools have impressive test scores.”—Alfie Kohn

There are several other things measured by standardized tests that tell us nothing about the quality of our schools and teachers (but much about the irrationality and dysfunction of our society). For example, they also measure children’s resilience and composure. Kids who do not panic under stress tend to do better than those suffer from test anxiety, something that depends far more on upbringing and the culture in the home than on anything teachers bring to the classroom.  

Children’s anxiety should be taken more seriously than it is, as it seems to be growing and it reflects poor emotional wellbeing and may be an indicator of longer term problems that could diminish their future success and health. It is also, to a large extent, a product of the socioeconomic reality in which children are living. The majority of parents are working longer hours, putting in more labor per hour, and enjoying less material security than their parents’ and grandparents’ generations, thus increasing their stress and anxiety—something that does not go unnoticed by their children.

High stakes tests also measure whether students give a damn. Amazingly, while there is no rational reason for children to take most of the tests seriously (few have any effect on their ability to graduate or get into college), most children do try to do well. This is said testament to the success of the public education system in molding compliant, passive citizens who do as they are told and follow the rules without questioning the logic or costs to society.

Kohn also argues, like many critics of the education reform movement, that standardized testing cheats children out of a “real” education, by taking away time from content, teachable moments, critical thinking, arts, science and physical education. Of course the credibility of this argument depends on the one’s definition of “real” education. In the eyes of employers, standardized tests do a fine job in support of real education because the primary goal of education is to train and sort individuals for their future roles in the economy. Since the test scores are most influenced by children’s socioeconomic backgrounds, they also help maintain the class distinctions in our society.

If a “real” education involves critical thinking, intelligent questioning, creativity, independence of thought, courage to challenge orthodoxies and rules and an intrinsic love of learning, then we need to move away from most testing, as well as the focus on standards and getting the “right” answer.

Dennis Bartels, director of San Francisco’s Exploratorium, points out that critical thinking requires the ability to ask “juicy” questions about phenomena (e.g., questions about cause and effect) and a tolerance for failure (experiments do not always yield meaningful results and scientists often learn more from their mistakes than from the things that went as expected). He argues that informal learning environments, like museums, tolerate failure better than schools do (e.g., the wrong answer in class results in a lower grade or looking foolish in front of peers). Even without standardized testing, schools do tend to emphasize getting the right answers (consider all the “cook-booky,” proof-of-concept high school lab activities in which there is only one correct result and the smart students know this answer before they have even done the experiment). Furthermore, with the increasing obsession with testing, standards and “college-readiness,” schools have little time for students to ask and test such questions in the first place.

The real cheating scandal is not just that the obsession with testing is cheating our children out of a decent education. The entire public education system, with its emphasis on making children career- or college-ready, its obsession with accountability and standards, its overcrowded classrooms and its overworked and underpaid teachers, and the frantic pace to get through everything before the April exams, is an anxiety-provoking and intellectually and socially stultifying experience.

Then again, if the purpose of education truly is to make us ready for a life of obedience and passivity at work and college, then perhaps the testing mania is the right prescription for preparing kids for their future lives.

Testing Causes Failure

The high stakes tests required by No Child Left Behind are designed to increase the number of failing schools (see here and here), thus forcing them to adopt free market reforms like reconstitution, charter school conversion, or hiring private tutors and curriculum consultants. However, as Valerie Strauss points out in a recent piece in her Answer Sheet blog, the increasing emphasis on high stakes tests and the pressure to improve scores may also be increasing student anxiety and their ability to perform well on the exams.

Huck/Konopacki Labor Cartoons

 Test anxiety is considered a psychological condition that goes well beyond the typical nervousness that most people experience before a test. Sufferers experience anxiety so intense that it impairs their ability to recall basic facts, comprehend test questions, and perform to their potential. Thus, the test results that are being used to punish schools and districts and that are driving much of the reform movement are likely skewed, making student achievement and school quality appear much worse than they are.

Straus points out that it is difficult to know exactly how pervasive the problem is, but the American Test Anxiety Association believes as many as 20% of students suffer from substantial test anxiety, while  an additional 18% may experience some degree of test anxiety. The problem may be becoming more prevalent because of the intense emphasis schools and districts are placing on state and federal exams. Competition for slots in high status universities may also be contributing the problem by increasing the pressure to do well on SATs, Advanced Placement and even course unit exams.

Strauss’ article provides some useful tips from Annie Murphy Paul, some of which I have been using with my students to varying degrees of success. Paul’s first suggestion is to “Unload on paper.” I call it a brain dump. The way it works is that we review together before the test, and then I have students clear everything from their desks, give them scratch paper and have them dump as much onto their scratch paper as they can remember from review, lectures, and homework before beginning the test. I even refrain from passing out the tests for five minutes to give them time and encouragement to do this rather than succumbing to the temptation to rush into the test to “get it over with.”

The rationale for this strategy is that when students feel nervous, their thinking becomes muddled and their ability to recall is hindered. Anxieties can use up some of the working memory. By doing a “brain dump” prior to even seeing the test, the stakes are lowered and the memories are fresher. It is kind of like being given permission to use a cheat sheet or having open notes, either of which can serve as a “crutch” that relaxes students by giving them the sense they have extra support, thus relieving some of the anxiety.

Paul also points to some research that showed positive effects from asking students to write about their anxieties prior to a test. While seemingly counterintuitive (i.e., this might heighten the cycle of negative thinking), studies show that it actually improved test scores. One explanation is that it helps to affirm and legitimize students’ feelings, which is an important step toward overcoming negative thinking.

She also suggests that test anxiety may be especially bad among girls and minority students because of “stereotype threat,” the fear that poor test performance will confirm negative stereotypes about their gender or race. Writing about such feelings prior to taking the test may help affirm this kind of thinking, too, and Paul points to a study that supports this hypothesis.

Paul’s final suggestion is to lead students in relaxation exercises prior to exams, like a guided meditation that focuses on breathing and body awareness. This is another technique that I have been using for years, with varying degrees of success. Of course it is important to have a plan for how to deal with the occasional goof-offs who don’t take it seriously and disrupt the process for the others, but, for the most part my students do take it seriously.

I regularly debrief with my students after exams and find that the majority like the relaxation exercises and believe they help. However, there are some who continue to do poorly on exams, despite the relaxation exercises and brain dumps. I suspect that some of this stems from intense pressure by parents to perform well or from growing up around anxious parents. Therefore, like many aspects of school success, test anxiety may be influenced more by outside of school factors than by anything under the control of teachers.

So, aside from the three strategies proposed by Paul, if we really care about students’ health and emotional wellbeing (not to mention their academic success), we need to address these outside of school influences. One of the most expedient solutions is to end the obsession with accountability and testing. Since NCLB has done nothing to improve schools, and has almost certainly worsened them by taking so much class time away from actual learning and by replacing thinking and creativity with rote memorization and bubble-in testing, let’s simply do away with it. By abolishing all high stakes exams we will lose nothing in terms of school quality, but we will reduce some of the stressors contributing to student anxiety (not to mention teacher anxiety) and allow schools to restore much of the science, arts and physical education that were cut to make room for more test preparation.

Another solution is to change the way students apply for and are accepted to colleges. Ideally, every student who wants to go to college should be able to go, even if this means providing the remedial courses necessary for potential students who are not yet academically ready and vastly increasing taxes (on the wealthy) to pay for all the extra professors and classrooms. Doing this would significantly reduce the anxiety that many students feel as a result of the competition for scarce university slots. It would also increase the number of people with college degrees and their economic opportunities.

Of course the biggest influence on student anxiety may be their anxious parents. Children pick up a lot from their families, particularly behaviors, social attitudes and coping mechanisms (or lack thereof). Yet a lot adult anxieties stem from their own material insecurity (e.g., how are we going to pay the mortgage with this pay cut?) or from the burden of having too many personal, social and work-related responsibilities (e.g., how am I going to get the kids to school on time and not be late for work myself?) An increase in such anxieties is an expected consequence of the rapidly increasing worker productivity that has occurred over the last three decades, which has made the bosses richer by squeezing more work and greater profits out of their employees per hour worked, causing both a decline in living standards and a rise in work-related demands and stress.  

This source of anxiety seems more intractable since a lasting solution requires the abolition of wage labor and capitalism. However, short of this, gains could be made through collective actions by workers to raise wages and improve working conditions. Rather than simply giving the bosses the profits from our increased productivity, we could demand shorter workdays or work weeks at the same or higher pay. The Wobblies (IWW) use to call for a four hour work day and a four day work week. This might seem like a fantasy in today’s economic and political climate, but it is worth working toward as it would reduce (or end) unemployment, provide us with more time to spend with friends, family and to pursue our personal interests, while reducing anxiety and stress, thus improving overall health and wellbeing,.

Intelligent Design is For ‘Fraidy Cats

Scaredy Cats (Image by Paparutzi)

Some scientists just love to look for a biological explanation for everything. A recent blog posting Death, Science And Intelligent Design, by Jonathan Parkinson, looks at why people are so wedded to Intelligent Design (ID), despite the overwhelming lack of evidence.

Parkinson writes about a recent study in PLoSOne that argues that ID's popularity in some cases is partly due to peoples’ anxiety about their own mortality. Here is the experimental design: 122 undergraduate students were asked to think about and then write about either their own death or a painful visit to the dentist (the control group). Then they read a 174-word passage by evolutionary biologist (and anti-religion activist) Richard Dawkins which summarized the evidence for evolution, followed by a passage by Michael Behe, also 174 words long, summarizing the arguments in favor of ID. Students then rated the authors on a 9-point scale and ranked their own religious beliefs on a 10-point scale. The researchers repeated the experiment with several other groups, including 832 randomly selected Americans.


The results were intriguing. In four of the groups, students who were asked to imagine their own deaths had a statistically significant higher appreciation for Behe's arguments and ID compared to the control group, even after controlling for religiosity. However, for the one group of natural science students, appreciation for Behe/ID declined after imagining their own deaths.

Okay, now let’s discuss the problems with this study. First, the sample size was small for most of the groups studied and the effects, while statistically significant were also pretty small for some of the groups. Choosing a painful dental experience as the control treatment doesn’t make a whole lot of sense either. Why not have the control group simply read the passages without writing the essay on death? The order in which they read the articles may also have created a bias. Perhaps if they read Dawkins last, they would have been more predisposed to his ideas. There are also a variety of variables that were not controlled (e.g., socioeconomic status, ethnicity, health status) that might have influenced either the subjects’ belief in ID or their receptiveness to it. And lastly, Dawkins was probably not the best author to have them read, considering that he is antagonistic to religiosity.

The conclusion of the authors is that support for ID is fueled by "existential anxiety," and that it offers them a sense of meaning and purpose while evolution does not. (Life science students ostensibly have found purpose and meaning in their search for rational explanations of natural phenomena). This brings up another problem with the study: why should existential anxiety over death draw one toward ID, but not anxiety over pain, especially when we consider that death puts an end to pain, whereas dental pain could continue long after the experience and include pain in the pocketbook and the loss of the ability to enjoy one’s meals? Of course this is too rational and the anxiety is really more about people’s lack of experience with death and their fear of the unknown.

Parkinson finds the study’s conclusions plausible, but insufficient, arguing that there are likely two additional factors that influence belief in ID. First, many people believe that the theory of evolution is incompatible with religious belief. Thus, if they are forced to choose between the two, the majority will choose the religion. Parkinson’s other factor is related to the limited imagination of humans and our tendency to use metaphors to understand complex phenomena. There aren’t really any good metaphors for evolution, nor is it easy to understand it based on everyday experiences, whereas ID is based on the anthropomorphic metaphor that life is too complex to have arisen spontaneously and must have been coordinated by an intelligent being.

While Parkinson may be correct, neither of his hypotheses really explains the results of the PLOS study. Why would thinking about death make some people (but not life scientists) more predisposed to ID than thinking about pain or dentistry? It is important to consider other possible explanations for these results. For example, perhaps life science students already have a predisposition against ID and perhaps they also have less existential anxiety about their own mortality. Perhaps they are just less fearful, in general, or have different coping mechanisms for dealing with their fears. Also, Parkinson’s last factor, that evolution is just plain difficult to understand, may be exacerbated by existential fear, at least for those who are susceptible to existential fear and who don’t already have a good grasp of evolution. There is also the question of whether existential anxiety predisposes people to religion in general, and not just religious explanations for the origins of life.