Tests vs. Exhibitions

I don’t need to say anything new here about why it’s more valuable for kids to stand up and show what they’ve learned than it is for them to fill in bubbles on a standardized test. Even the people who are fighting so hard for standards-based reform will admit that public exhibitions can give both teachers and parents a good understanding of what a kid knows, or at least what the kid has accomplished up to that point. In 1984, Ted Sizer picked up where John Dewey left off and made diploma by exhibition (rather than by grades or by seat time) one of the core principles of the Coalition of Essential Schools. And most schools today totally agree with Ted. But that’s the theory winning, not the practice.

It’s sad, but most of the schools that want to use exhibitions don’t, simply because of the scheduling nightmare. Yes, I agree that within the traditional 45-minutes-per-class school schedule it is really hard to find time for 2,000 kids to demonstrate what they’ve learned in front of their teachers, peers, and families. Smaller schools and nontraditional sched- uling is the obvious answer here. Again, we need to bust things up; other- wise, we are just tweaking around the edges.

On a deeper level, those of us who believe in exhibitions need to be clearer about their true purpose. Exhibitions have to be used to promote growth, not to sort students in the same way test scores do. Exhibitions have to be conversations about learning between the students and their teachers, peers, and families.

Exhibitions, and all the work that goes before and after them, empha- size the process of learning, not just the end product. At The Met, advi- sors are constantly asking students to talk about the process they used to get to where they are, to show drafts of the final papers they’re pre- senting, to think about what needs to come next. And, although exhibi- tions are set up to assess what has happened in the previous weeks, they must also include goal setting for future growth. They must be part of a continuous and connected cycle of learning.

During The Met’s first year, one of our freshmen, Tricia, did an exhibition that was a beautiful example of what an exhibition should be. It was like a dress rehearsal for her as she was beginning to learn how to talk about her learning. Tricia had her portfolio of work laid out; she had drafts of a story she was writing, showing her progress; she had excerpts of a book she was reading; she had examples from her algebra workshop; she had a learning plan she’d developed with her advisor and her mother; and she had a five-page paper that explained how all her learning over the quarter met the goals she’d set for herself. During her presentation, Tricia talked in depth about the book she was reading and had her audience reading along and learning about symbolism. It was a formative and beautiful assessment of the work she had done to that point. This exhibition laid the groundwork that Tricia’s advisor used over the next 10 weeks to help Tricia meet her learning goals.

Here was a 9th grader talking about her learning in a way you won’t see many other 9th graders talking. Here was an exhibition, like so many others I’ve seen, that made the whole question of whether tests or exhibitions are better for assessing students totally beside the point. If you were Tricia’s parent, after seeing all this real evidence of her learning, you would never be satisfied with a simple test score again. Six years later, this kid (who is now an adult) is still looking at her learning as something she owns and still setting her own high standards. And she is making some great choices.

. . . Wednesday morning I just started to cry. My experiences with the exhibitions were so good, I couldn’t contain myself. I was so moved by the seriousness of the students, the proud parents and advisors. The looks on the students’ faces as they nervously started, and the looks as they finished; the deep breaths, the hugs and the satisfaction . . .

Of course, I could also give you plenty of examples of bad exhibitions— exhibitions where students stumbled through their presentations, didn’t show any evidence of work they’d done, and couldn’t answer the panel’s questions. But even in these worst-case scenarios, the exhibition is a learning tool, because it allows the kid to really see what he or she doesn’t know. Even the worst exhibitions end up teach- ing students about the importance of preparation and planning, helping them build their public speaking skills, and giving them a clear picture of what they’ll need to work on before their next exhibition. I have seen many students totally pumped up after a terrible exhibition. Doing poorly actually increases their motivation. Rarely does a student who fails a test walk away from it with a new understanding of what she doesn’t know and excited about learning more so she can do better next time. With tests, there usually isn’t a next time, anyway.

Schools that use exhibitions as a method of assessment need to make sure that the students, staff, and parents understand the requirements and purpose of exhibitions. They also need to maximize exhibitions’ incredible value in building relationships in the school.

First, exhibitions are an amazing opportunity for parent involvement. Parents get to see their kids in action and get to actually hear them talk about what they’ve done and what they’ve learned, rather than just guessing about it based on a report card grade or assuming it’s happened because the kids are walking across the stage at graduation. An exhibition is a chance for every parent to see his or her child per- form, a chance to be proud. It is also a chance for them to question their child about school and not have him say, “It’s fine,” and then walk away and go to his room. Our Met parents say things like, “I loved seeing my son’s autobiography—I was so proud to see how he’d written more than 100 pages analyzing his life and his education,” and “I was amazed to watch my daughter take her love for marine biology and develop her own curriculum so she could teach it to the other kids at her school.”

Second, exhibitions are a great opportunity for teachers to really work together as a team. By sitting in on exhibitions given by their col- leagues’ students, individual teachers become part of a community that is invested in helping to teach each child. This opportunity to witness another teacher’s struggles or successes with individual students also helps all teachers become better equipped to provide the kind of colle- gial support that is vital to a healthy school.

Third, exhibitions are an opportunity to include the outside community in education by inviting others to come in and watch: local leaders, college students, professors, mentors, school board members, everyone. Every time I watch exhibitions at The Met, I’m reminded that I’m seeing our most sophisticated student-adult conversations. The interaction between the student and the audience creates a whole new level of communication where the student is at the center but is also receiving input from everyone about his or her learning.

Fourth, exhibitions promote rather than inhibit growth. This means that when an exhibition isn’t that great, or when the kid really isn’t prepared or hasn’t shown progress on his work, it is still an opportunity for others to see and applaud growth in other areas. In situations where I don’t feel students did a great job on their exhibitions, I have to remem- ber to ask myself, “Not great compared to what?” Even after a “bad” exhibition, I have heard parents say things like, “My son has never talked like that in front of a group before—I can’t believe he did that!” One of our students started her exhibition by warning the audience that she had a stutter. As it turned out, she didn’t stutter once during the entire presentation—but if she had, she would have been showing us her courage, her determination to keep going and to make herself under- stood. With every exhibition, there is always an upside, always some- thing learned. When you fail a test, you just fail, end of story. There is no end to the story with exhibitions. The learning keeps on happening.

Fifth, exhibitions completely eliminate cheating. In a 1998 survey by Who’s Who Among American High School Students, 80 percent of college- bound high schoolers admitted they’d cheated at least once.⁴ As a Met student once said, “You can cheat your way through other high schools and you can cheat your way through elementary and middle school, but here you cannot cheat at all. It’s impossible. When you have to stand in front of everyone and do your exhibition, you’ve got to have something.”⁵

Sixth, exhibitions encourage students to go deeper with their learning by requiring them to create and present a portfolio of their work. Where studying for a test may involve students looking at class notes and rereading textbooks, preparing a portfolio requires students to look at and define the many layers of their learning. This can mean sharing successive drafts of a paper, showing photos of a project in various phases of construction, and all sorts of other things. Deep learning is so important, and such a thrill to do and to watch.

Tests can do a lot of damage to a person who really wants to take learning further, branch out, learn more. I saw it myself back in college. My roommate and I were taking the same English course and had to read Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness. I read the book eight times (and ended up hating it) because it was going to be on the test and I knew I had to “know” it. My roommate loved the book and went on to read every book Conrad had ever written. I got an A on the test. My roommate got a D.

Clearly, deeper learning was not valued in that course. I got the “good” grade, but I knew my roommate had learned more than I had and that he had gotten more out of the book. And I envied the way he pursued his passion.

Finally, exhibitions allow, and require, students to set high standards for themselves. When they don’t do well at an exhibition, they know it—immediately. They don’t have to wait for a test score to come back to tell them they need to work harder. And if they have a personalized learn- ing plan (like all Met students do), they help determine what constitutes “doing well.” Exhibitions force students to become accountable for and take control of their own learning. Isn’t that what we’re striving for?

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