In a recent post, I talked about how I am wanting to phase out multiple choice in my classroom. So what did I do at work most of last week?
Write a multiple choice test. The irony and frustration of this is not lost on me.
We implement common assessments in our building, which means that all teachers teaching the same course must develop all of the assessments for each unit, making sure they are aligned to our student objectives (I can statements) and that what students should know, be able to do, and understand are clear to us so we can make that clear to students. We do this because it does help us have some lively and interesting discussions at times--often in the past we have pushed our thinking about learning, teaching, and assessing in a way that helped some of us grow from the experience.
I like the process. I just don't care for the final assessment product: that multiple choice test.
I stated as much to a well-respected colleague of mine, right after my Biology students didn't do so hot on one of these multiple choice assessments. I hadn't given my usual multiple-choice formative assessments along the way during this past unit, so my students weren't as prepared as they could have been (should have been?). It's not that they tanked the assessment; they just didn't do as well as I had thought they would. We spent our time analyzing, creating, and writing during class rather than take multiple choice assessments. You could say that my end assessment didn't match my instruction. Bad teacher.
My colleague had given more multiple choice formative assessments throughout the unit, and her students had done better. But she also told me that we still needed to give multiple choice questions because they were going to have to take them not only in their junior year on the state standardized assessments, but also later in life. She pointed out that the driver's test our students take is multiple choice, and that even our teacher certification tests we take here in Illinois are multiple choice--and that a lot of professions have standardized tests people have to take in order to get licensed. Her point was that our students would be taking multiple choice tests in real life, so we should be preparing students for them now.
But doesn't the driver's test also have a performance component? Don't teachers still have to student teach, not only to learn but also to display competence? Don't other professions have internships and apprenticeships? Even Grant Wiggins' son had to do the ultimate performance assessment to get a job, not some multiple choice test. If you read the postscript to that post, a health care professional describes what they do to make sure their new hires can perform to the standards required of them on the job in a real hospital--and nowhere in there does it mention taking multiple choice tests as being an adequate measure of their performance.
Don't students still have to do in real life, not just fill in bubbles? Haven't they had enough practice at bubble-filling? And why are we letting multiple choice assessments become the end-all and be-all of how students demonstrate what they know?
I guess I'm really railing at the bubble-riddled, it-could-be-a-guess-or-they-could-have-really-understood-it system that's in place. But, really, what's more important: that students can successfully complete multiple choice tests, or that they are prepared with thinking, doing, and reasoning skills that they'll need to perform well in life? It also doesn't help that multiple choice tests are easier to administer and score, and come with a false veneer of objectivity that some tout as "better" than performance assessments. Yes, reading blogs and scoring short stories and looking at lab presentations and talking to students about what they know takes so much longer than whipping out a multiple choice test--but they give a much clearer picture as to what skills and understandings students actually possess.
The more I teach, the more I find that I don't really care that much about how well student do on our multiple choice tests--I find myself taking much more interest in what and how they're doing on their blogs, their labs, and other performance-type assignments. I find I'm caring more about what students can show me they can do and helping them get better at how well they do it rather than how many correct bubbles they can fill in on an answer sheet.
photo credit: romana klee via photopin cc
