Standardized testing in the arts

Standardized testing in the arts?

I haven't heard anything about it, but this Nancy Flanagan has.

Here is a little bit of her blog post – read the whole thing here.

Why would we deliberately advance a worthless (and expensive-to-develop) mode of assessment for something as crucial to kids' well-being and our own economic vitality as the arts? The humanities are a creative wellspring for individual and social innovation. They cannot–and should never be–reduced to rote, bubbled-in recitation of dry facts. What standardized testing in music and the arts yields is mere quantification of students' ability to memorize. The tests tell us nothing about how students will apply artistic skill and expression to their real lives and careers. Further–they tell us nothing about the instructional quality of their teachers.

Let's start by debunking this myth: Standardized testing in the arts should be applauded because investment in test development means arts teachers might get to keep their jobs! This is like saying thank goodness for all those infarctions, because now we can staff our high-tech cardiac unit. Setting info-regurgitation tests into concrete will only make it easier to package and standardize bunch-of-facts arts curricula for broad dispersal, perhaps on-line, completely avoiding ineffective practices like singing together, rhythmic movement games, painting and sculpting, developing listening skills or putting on a show.

More here.

John Howell says

June 24, 2012 at 1:18 pm

Philip and colleagues: Nancy’s comments are completely worth reading and considering, but unfortuantely are just as one-sided as the blogs she cites in order to set up her straw-men arguments. (And since when have blogs emerged as valid scientific measures, anyway?!!!)

Music education is not, and never has been, any one single thing. That’s something that every great teacher knows, and every great writer about it including Kodály has thoroughly understood. It is indeed learning facts and figures, names and dates, just as any study of history or any other subject is, and has its own abstruse terminology and jargon, as every subject does. That means that there are aspects that CAN be taught objectively and tested objectively, and it’s that fact that has appeased non-musical administrators that yes, we are teaching an academic subject that is worthy of academic credit. Music Theory is the learning of labels for things our ears and minds should already understand, but it’s complex, technical, and can be tested, and the Freshman year in college is MUCH to late to start. Reading language is taught squentially through all the grades of elementary school; reading music should be taught in exactly the same way. And Music History is the study not just of composers and their dates but of the cultures in which they lived and worked, and can be tested.

But Music Education is also the acquisition of physical skills and the building of new mental pathways to support those skills, and while these skills can be evaluated objectively that evaluation will always be comparative rather than absolute and measure improvement rather than perfection, and therefore will always have a large subjective component. We say, and hopefully we believe, that we test these skills and their acquisition and refinement through performance, because in this sense they are much like any other physical skills, including athletic skills, and the proof, as they say, is in the doing. (Pudding is so messy!!)

But neither knowledge nor skills are enough, and in order to be an effective musician one also has to acquire what we vaguely call–but absolutely recognize when we see and hear it–as musicianship and musicality. And that is where everything else comes together, and where individual feelings or creativity, or whatever else you care to call it, comes into play. And that is completely subjective, and any assessment must therefore be completely subjective and will necessarily differ from one observer to another. In fact, assessment of musicianship and musicality is as much an assessment of the asssessor as it is of the assessee!!!

All of this is not restricted to music, of course, but to all of the arts which are both creative and re-creative, and that’s why we need to keep developing not just composers, playwrights, and choreographers, but singers and instrumentalists, actors, and dancers. (Not to mention conductors and stage directors!) Creating music (composing, arranging, and improvising) is what a few people with a healthy dose of creativity do. RE-creating music (singing, playing, conducting, and most importantly collaborating with others) is what we ALL do, if we deserve to be called musicians at all. And developing everything that goes into that is what we, as teachers, must concern ourselves with, not just one aspect of it while ignoring the others.

All the best,

John

Comments

John Howell says

June 24, 2012 at 1:18 pm

Philip and colleagues: Nancy’s comments are completely worth reading and considering, but unfortuantely are just as one-sided as the blogs she cites in order to set up her straw-men arguments. (And since when have blogs emerged as valid scientific measures, anyway?!!!)

Music education is not, and never has been, any one single thing. That’s something that every great teacher knows, and every great writer about it including Kodály has thoroughly understood. It is indeed learning facts and figures, names and dates, just as any study of history or any other subject is, and has its own abstruse terminology and jargon, as every subject does. That means that there are aspects that CAN be taught objectively and tested objectively, and it’s that fact that has appeased non-musical administrators that yes, we are teaching an academic subject that is worthy of academic credit. Music Theory is the learning of labels for things our ears and minds should already understand, but it’s complex, technical, and can be tested, and the Freshman year in college is MUCH to late to start. Reading language is taught squentially through all the grades of elementary school; reading music should be taught in exactly the same way. And Music History is the study not just of composers and their dates but of the cultures in which they lived and worked, and can be tested.

But Music Education is also the acquisition of physical skills and the building of new mental pathways to support those skills, and while these skills can be evaluated objectively that evaluation will always be comparative rather than absolute and measure improvement rather than perfection, and therefore will always have a large subjective component. We say, and hopefully we believe, that we test these skills and their acquisition and refinement through performance, because in this sense they are much like any other physical skills, including athletic skills, and the proof, as they say, is in the doing. (Pudding is so messy!!)

But neither knowledge nor skills are enough, and in order to be an effective musician one also has to acquire what we vaguely call–but absolutely recognize when we see and hear it–as musicianship and musicality. And that is where everything else comes together, and where individual feelings or creativity, or whatever else you care to call it, comes into play. And that is completely subjective, and any assessment must therefore be completely subjective and will necessarily differ from one observer to another. In fact, assessment of musicianship and musicality is as much an assessment of the asssessor as it is of the assessee!!!

All of this is not restricted to music, of course, but to all of the arts which are both creative and re-creative, and that’s why we need to keep developing not just composers, playwrights, and choreographers, but singers and instrumentalists, actors, and dancers. (Not to mention conductors and stage directors!) Creating music (composing, arranging, and improvising) is what a few people with a healthy dose of creativity do. RE-creating music (singing, playing, conducting, and most importantly collaborating with others) is what we ALL do, if we deserve to be called musicians at all. And developing everything that goes into that is what we, as teachers, must concern ourselves with, not just one aspect of it while ignoring the others.

All the best,

John

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