Just before the the start of
the school year, Israel’s Education Ministry announced its decision to cancel the Meitzav
exam, a standardized test given every two years to students in fifth and eighth
grades designed to measure competence
in English, math, science and technology and native language, in addition to
assessing the school’s pedagogic environment. As one might imagine, this news
was greeted with mixed reactions.
Many
Israeli educators welcomed the news, saying that the exam puts too much
emphasis on results and testing and not enough on learning. Exam results, they
say, are not a tool for measurement and improvement, but come at the expense of
teaching and true leaning.
To
be sure, no test is perfect; there is always a risk of “teaching for the test.”
Measurement in education is difficult and is a controversial topic that is
widely studied. However, while there is still much work to be done in this area,
few educators advocate for no testing or measurement at all.
Without
any published results or information, parents will have no way of knowing how
their children’s schools are doing compared to others in their community or
country. The Ministry of Education itself cited the risk of published results embarrassing
teachers at low-performing schools as one reason for cancelling the test.
While
Israeli educators may question the quality of the Meitzav exam, they are not addressing the real issue—the quality of
the education system itself. Regardless of the results of an exam that compares
Israeli students and schools to each other, Israeli students continue to test
well below their peers from other OECD
countries. Israel has one of the largest and fastest growing gaps in educational
achievements between the rich and the poor and the number of young people (age
25-34) with university degrees in shrinking in Israel and growing in other
countries.
Instead of focusing on the
test, perhaps the focus should be on improving the educational system it is attempting
to measure?
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