Reforma: David Calderon*, Guest Contributor
The annual administration of the ENLACE [Link] achievement test to almost 16 million students in elementary and middle school has just ended.
There are valid pedagogic criticisms. The performance of an individual student on a two-hour test is a snapshot, an indication to assess the work of the entire school year. To give it a disproportionate place impoverishes the range of learning. Spurious use is made of it in private schools to attract customers, and in public schools to give awards, without analyzing or reinforcing classroom practices that can lead to good results. It focuses attention on the actual scores, not on progress and what explains it. It notes how many questions a student answered correctly, but it doesn't emphasized the feat of a good part of the group having moved beyond the "insufficient" level. It is counterproductive to prepare students for the test, instead of using the test to prepare students.
The second group of criticisms also has a foundation. The original intention for using the test was to gain a history of learning trajectories, student by student, to better meet their needs and requirements and provide accountability to parents and the community. It was also to be used to readjust the components of education--from teacher training to the distribution of resources, from curriculum revision to changes in educational materials and daily practices in the classroom. But there is no suitable method for teachers to receive the results for their current group, nor of prior years, so that they can plan their strategies for the year. Parents also don't know how to benefit from the test results; in the recent survey by IFIE [Institute for Educational Training and Research] only 3 in 10 knew their children's results. There is also no consistent and focused use of ENLACE results to reformulate the other pieces of public policy at a federal or state level, with rare exceptions. The diagnosis does not follow the treatment: after being weighed on the scale, there is no diet or exercise.
The unfortunate phenomenon is the selling and copying of the test. Most booklets of questions that are sold are "home-made" collections of past test questions. The complaint against leaks of the test are made in a timely and formal manner, should be welcomed, and there must be follow up on the reports submitted as to irregularities in the test's administration. Last year, more than 1,780 tests are not reliable because of the copying factor, about 5% of the universe of those tested. Selling or copying are also symptoms: what is behind it is the fear of not achieving an acceptable result ... and that can lead to abuses that disrupt the results of any test, standardized or not, that is administered.
Ideological criticisms are predictable: ENLACE is illegitimate because the OECD [Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development], the CIA and the Vatican ordered it. In order to take it, every child turns into a robot, he doesn't think and becomes, ipso facto, cheap labor. Because it is standardized ..., by definition it undermines cultural diversity, the wisdom of indigenous peoples and the irreducible difference between us and the neighboring township. Because there are some poorly formulated questions or a number of tests have been sold or copied, all historical results from seven years and 16 million tests ought to be discarded. The sabotage of testing in Oaxaca and Michoacan serves as an evaluation of the State's management of education: it is still "insufficient".
That ENLACE doesn't assess all education purposes doesn't make it useless, invalid or wrong. Diagnosis and the corresponding treatment without data collection is magic and not medicine. A malnourished child is not fed by a laboratory analysis, but not having it gives space to subjectivity, fragmentation and conformity. It will be very valuable to have the new INEE [National Institute for Educational Evaluation, established by the education reform law] provide clear, forceful guidelines to evaluate students which meet at least three principles: identification of the learning path, accountability, and providing a basis for redesigning public policy. After the criticism of ENLACE, what we need is more transparency, better tools and subsequent actions, not deep opacity.
*David Calderon is CEO of Mexicans First, a civic organization supported by a number of Mexican business people. It has been highly critical of the SNTE, the National Union of Education Workers. The dissident teachers organization, the National Coordinating Committee of Education Workers (CNTE), charges that Mexicans First and the ENLACE test are instruments of the OECD and global neoliberal forces. The paragraph above on "ideological criticisms" is a reference to CNTE criticisms of ENLACE.
Reforma only allows subscribers access to its website articles.