I recently met a surgeon and struck up a conversation with him about his practice. At one point during the conversation he started telling me about the interns and residents who work for him, commenting that they are among the most successful, highest performing students that our educational system produces. He described one such young physician as remarkably bright, scoring a near perfect on his SAT and exceptionally high on the MCAT (Medical College Admission Test).
What he said next, however, was fascinating. Without prompting from me, he went on to describe the shortcomings of this person in his role as a physician, which he described as numerous and including deficits in a range of areas.
As I was reflecting on the conversation later that night, it struck me that by any measure the resident he described is an overwhelming educational success, one that any school would proudly point to as proof of the quality and efficacy of its programming. Near perfect standardized test scores. Admission to a prestigious medical school. And yet, here was his mentor openly lamenting his inadequacies in the skills it takes to actually perform his job well.
So why am I telling you this?
Well…I think this story offers a timely lesson as we are wrapping up the standardized test we give each year. Unfortunately, our educational system has adopted an assessment structure where test scores are the primary metric used to determine the capacities of a child, and as a result, schools optimize their programming almost exclusively for them.
Never mind the fact that the tests themselves only measure a small slice of what it takes to be a successful human — that they don’t even pretend to assess critical thinking, creativity, leadership, or character. And definitely never mind that such an outsized emphasis on them will beat the curiosity out of even the most inquisitive children and rebuild them as educational misers who value only that which can be measured on a multiple choice test.
My point in sharing all of this is to offer some perspective as many of your children have taken a standardized test this week. Please be aware that we offer them merely as an opportunity to gauge progress in the very narrow slice of competency that these tests measure, and we are acutely aware of their limitations, both in their ability to offer a meaningful holistic assessment and even in their reliability in assessing the narrow band of skills that they purport to.
And yet, I should at least mention that in spite of our refusal to bow at the altar of these tests, Acton learners tend to do very well on them. Every year that we’ve offered these tests the average score has come back well ahead of grade level.
Far more importantly, though, I want to assure you that we will refuse to worship standardized tests as the almighty judge and sovereign dictator of a child’s capacities. We will refuse to aim our programming solely at the target of test achievement, churning out hollow graduates who perform well on such tests but are able to do little else. And we will most certainly refuse to categorize and label the potential of a child based on these scores.
Instead…we will be a launching place for heroes who are set to make a mark on the world through the unique combination of their academic skills and the less tangible (and certainly less easily measurable) skills that separate those who are good at taking tests from those who actually do meaningful work in the world.
Society is desperate for rounded leaders who can span this chasm.
I’m grateful that our children will be those precious few.