Standards vs. Standardization

This morning I was struck by the following add-on to a report about Business First rankings of elementary schools on WGRZ:

“Private schools that don't participate in the statewide testing program are not included in Business First's rankings, since their performances can't be measured against standardized benchmarks. Among the well-known schools that don't participate are Elmwood Franklin School, Nichols School and Park School of Buffalo.”

Mindful of the adage "what gets measured, gets done" I took a look at the 4th grade ELA tests upon which these ranking are based. On the math portion, the following question caught my eye:

This is a fine question, as one of the things that it seems to be measuring is whether students have learned the important mathematical concept that multiplication is a shortcut for, and function of, addition. Unfortunately, students can also find the correct answer by simple computation and miss this concept entirely.

This is a fine question, I would argue, for a classroom teacher to pose to students to gauge both their computational prowess and their conceptual understanding. In educational jargon, this is a standard, which my dictionary defines as: an idea or thing used as a measure, norm, or model in comparative evaluations. At Park, we willingly align our curriculum and pedagogy to such standards, as they represent what students should be able to know and do in order to be engaged and productive adults.

I am hopeful that in many of the high ranking public elementary schools, the same thing happens as well, albeit constrained by the need to cover all of the computation and conceptual items on the state test (which frankly seem to skew towards the computational, which is much easier to measure) and without regard for the different developmental stages that students may bring to a fourth grade class.

Unfortunately, as a "standardized benchmark," which my dictionary defines as: causing something to conform to a standard, such a question falls short, as the test can not discern how a student arrives at a correct answer, and whether he or she is simply "solving for x" or has developed a true understanding of the underlying mathematical concept that is being taught.

This is the difference between standards and standardization.