Wynne Ferdinand's LaGuardia Workshop

Part II: Conflict Between Transformative Learning and Standardized Testing [Wynne Ferdinand's LaGuardia Workshop]

On April 14, 2014, I attended Wynne Ferdinand’s HSE/TASC workshop at LaGuardia. Overall, the workshop was very enlightening. I had very little exposure to the old GED. My previous experience has been limited to Ms. Ferdinand’s classroom visit the week before, and the discussions we’ve had in class about high school equivalency test and the role in adult education. There was some overlapping content between the LaGuardia presentation and the City College classroom visit, but I did get a hands-on experience with mock TASC tests.

Ferdinand stressed the new focus of the TASC exam: depth over breadth. What this comes down to is interdisciplinary skills being more obviously tested: reading comprehension, deductive and inductive reasoning, basic mathematics functions are critical to the all five sections of the exam. In the workshop, we analyzed sections of the exam and evaluated them on the skills needed to successfully answer question. In my previous post, I questioned the place of transformative education in standardized testing. While I still believe test preparatory courses are limited because of their very nature, this approach (utilizing many skills to engage in many different subjects) is slightly more transformative than strict memorization because the student learns to exercise fundamental skills in a way that will hopefully lead them to the understanding that those skills are applicable in other situations.

Another important factor in this experience that was invaluable to me was the opportunity it gave me to interact with more closely with my fellow colleagues and administrators. We were able to come together discuss real concerns we had about the TASC such as curriculum changes, no set cut scores, and the ambiguous norming process. It helped introduce me to the wider field of my job and put my efforts as a tutor and my future career as an educator into context.

Conflict Between Transformative Learning and Standardized Testing [Wynn Ferdinand Classroom Visit]

Conflict Between Transformative Learning and Standardized Testing [Wynn Ferdinand Classroom Visit]

On April 1, 2014, Wynne Ferdinand visited our Adult Learners class. For two and a half hours, I learned more about high school equivalency tests than I’d ever before in my life. She explained the financial aspects surrounding the revised GED, the alignment to Common Core standards, why New York elected to offer the TASC over the GED and more. Overall, there seems to be a general shift towards standardization as a cure-all for the education system, and the changes in high school equivalency are reflecting that pattern.

However, what interested me the most about all of this information was the role of transformative learning in this new atmosphere of standardization. What role does transformative learning or andragogy have in test preparation courses? Teaching as merely a means to pass a test seems contradictory to every facet of transformative and adult learning. It ignores the individual’s past experience when it assumes a set standard of knowledge that the student may or may not lack. It shifts the focus onto the teacher as exclusive possessor of power, and students as receptacles of the teacher’s knowledge. It leaves very little room for transformative changes to occur, and within the scarce breathing room that it allows, all the work of balancing transformative learning and test preparation is left solely on the educator’s shoulders.

For example, I work as a teacher’s assistant/tutor for the Veterans Upward Bound program at Laguardia Community College. The VUB helps prepare students for the CUNY Entrance Exam and, infrequently, the GED/TASC.  In the program, we have a problem with student retention. Because the exam can be taken whenever students feel themselves ready, students often drop out in middle of a cycle, either because they’ve passed the test and are able to move on to college-level courses, or because they’ve not passed the exam and would rather start anew in an up-coming cycle. There is very little incentive to keep them in the classroom for the richness of learning itself, and not nearly enough opportunities for transformative learning.

Above: The remaining two students of his VUB cycle sitting for their final exam.

Ferdinand mentioned the Bridge Program at LaGuardia, and they seem to have a better holistic approach embedded in the way the program is structure. But, I feel like teaching toward a test is always going to be limiting when considering transformative learning as a major goal in education.