“The tests are not measuring how much students learned or can learn,” says Tienken. “They are predominately measuring the [social] capital of the student.”
Social capital is “the potential ability to obtain resources… or information from one’s personal connections.”
We can focus on improving curriculum all we want, but at the end of the day, we need to improve social capital for our youth. We need to invest in building social capital for our youth, social capital, for our youth. We need to invest in it.
We all know that standardized tests cause a cascade of problems in the school system. More and more evidence shows us that standardized tests are measuring the wrong thing. And yet, we design our entire school system around standardized tests. They guide what happens in the classroom, how staff is compensated, how districts are funded, and ultimately how youth and families experience economic mobility.
As with any complex problem, we need to address it from multiple angles such as: school culture, community buy in, and policy changes. Let’s engage our imagination to focus on what shifts we can make in the classroom that increase social capital.
We can design curriculum that requires students to interview and make connections with community members, work on a project with industry mentors, hit the streets with a voting campaign, and create a musical event that invites community participation.
What other ideas can we think of? And how can we use the value we create in this kind of curriculum to shape school culture, community buy in, and policy changes?
————–
Research Shows What State Standardized Tests Actually Measure. Forbes, Feb 2024
TUNING Design Co. 