Important Trend Against NCLB and Standardized Testing

Recent grant writing may suggest a trend towards more creative, interdisciplinary studies - and away from standardized testing.  

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Why do we give standardized tests to "right brained" people?

Question: if "right brain people" demonstrate their intelligence by thinking abstractly, by creating new combinations of things or by possibly communicating concepts through music or art – how can it be fair to give them a left brained test (traditional IQ test) as an objective measure of their intelligence!! Furthermore, how can you objectively compare their scores to the "left brained" population when the test will likely favor left-brained people?!

In other words, is it fair to give right brain people left-brain oriented IQ tests and college entrance exams like the SAT?

Thus, the new study shows that basic differences in brain activity between creative and methodical problem solvers exist and are evident even when these individuals are not working on a problem. According to Kounios, “Problem solving, whether creative or methodical, doesn’t begin from scratch when a person starts to work on a problem. His or her pre-existing brain-state biases a person to use a creative or a methodical strategy.”

Take a look at this last line. One way to interpret this is that a right brain person taking a standardized test will naturally try to be creative in answering a question. The only problem is that on many of these problems, it’s not necessary and will probably slow you down!

Solution: begin work on creating a whole brain standardized test or consider giving different types of tests to people who classify themselves as “right brained.”

Source: posted by Rebecca Sato on The Daily Galaxy (link is on the title of this post).

Study: Kounios, J., Fleck, J.I., Green, D.L., Payne, L., Stevenson, J.L., Bowden, M., & Jung- Beeman, M. (2008). The origins of insight in resting-state brain activity. Neuropsychologia, 46, 281-291.

Are students ready for "the conceptual age?"

Standardized tests exist in every sector of the educational landscape. From the SAT to the GRE, LSAT and more, there is considerable interest in numbers. It makes it easy to quantify learning. But, if you give someone two separate ideas and ask them to combine them into one usable idea, or ask them to explain a phenomenon or interpret data, some of these great test takers might fall short. Why? Because the emphasis in education is on standardizing knowledge, not on creativity or abstract thinking. Even in 2005, we still expect students, for the most part, to think in a linear fashion. Yet, our world is changing... quickly. Daniel Pink, in A Whole New Mind, reports that we are entering a "conceptual age," when we will need people to think in new ways. Employers, according to Pink, will need students to see a larger picture, one where they can see trends, merge ideas and create new strategies. Richard Florida reports that there are nearly 40 million people now in the U.S. who are part of a "creative class." This group of teachers, musicians, artists, scientists and others makes up approximately 30 percent of the workforce. Also consider the observations of Tom Friedman in The World is Flat,that places like Bangalore and Beijing are becoming rival economic centers to US cities, and we have to ask ourselves, as educators, if we should make changes or additions to the curriculum.