3 Reasons We Can Do Better than Timed Tests to Measure Fluency in Math

 My daughter’s homework can have a huge affect on her emotions for the afternoon. She doesn’t love homework on a good day, but there are days that she comes home with a dark cloud over her head, caused by the assignment of the day.

This week she had one that brought out the worst in her, making her snap at everyone and storm off to the car, throwing her backpack in the trunk before buckling in and pouting. Before I even have the chance to ask, she states in an frustrated, exasperated tone, “We have to do a timed test today!”

I sighed, knowing that the teacher innocently gave our family a difficult night ahead. My daughter can do basic facts, but she isn’t very quick with them yet. But more importantly, when she is told she is being timed, she shuts down, answers incorrectly, and starts to literally scribble on the paper rather than solving the problems. None of this is useful for learning math.

First, timed tests don’t measure what most teachers think they do.

Timed tests are commonly thought to assess fluency, but fluency is a different skill than memorization entirely. When teachers talk about fluency in reading, a big component of what they are looking for is how quickly students can read the words. Reading fluency also encompasses the knowledge of sight words, which contributes to the speed at which a student can get through a passage.

It follows that there is room for confusion when teachers read in the common core that students need to demonstrate fluency with the facts, and equate it with needing to be fast with the facts.

According to the article Assessing Basic Fact Fluency, by Kling and Bay-Williams (2014), basic fact fluency can be defined as, “the efficient, appropriate, and flexible application of single-digit calculation skills”

According to the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics, fluency, as a term refers to more than just having the facts memorized. Fluency in math facts requires four different components.

To assess basic fact fluency, all four tenets of fluency (flexibility, appropriate
strategy use, efficiency, and accuracy) must be addressed.

The word efficient does speak to how long it takes for students to solve a problem, and there are definitely strategies that are not efficient. For example, a child that still has to draw dots for every problem on the page is not being efficient.

But the other tenets of fluency are less about speed, and more about use of appropriate strategies. Is the child able to solve the problems and get the right answer? Are they able to mentally regroup or count up to solve the problem? Do they know more than one way to solve the problem?

As you can guess, a timed test, while it might test how quickly they can write the answers, doesn’t do a good job at assessing a student’s ability to use different strategies and emphasizes speed over accuracy, forcing even bright kids to try to solve the problems so fast, they frequently make mistakes just due to their speed.

The National Council of Teachers of Mathematics also goes on to recommend a variety of ways to test fluency, and none of them are timed, including

1. Interviews- where teachers sit down and simply ask kids to explain how they would solve a variety of problems.
2. Observation- watching as the students complete math pages and play math games to see if they consistently know the answer, and can competently explain how they got it.
3. Journaling- having children answer questions about how they would explain how to solve a problem to someone who didn’t know what to do.
4. Quizzes- specifically talked about in contrast to timed tests, and specifically described as “shorter, not timed, and …focus on strategies.”

Second, timed tests, in their very nature, cause such high levels of stress that students are unable to process calculations.

They are designed to cause stress, in the thought that the stress would cause the students to work faster, pushing and shoving the math facts to a place where they can be spewed out as fast as the child can write.

But research shows that timed tests actually cause the brain so much stress, it effectively blocks the working memory part of the brain- the very part needed to do math calculations.

Sian Beilock, an associate professor of psychology at the University of Chicago, for example, has found that when children are put under math stress, they are unable to execute math problems successfully.

For the most capable students, the research confirms, stress impedes the functioning of their working memory and reduces achievement. Research conducted at Stanford revealed that math anxiety changes the structure and workings of the brain.

What is the use of an assessment that causes so much stress for kids that it actually allows them to do math less effectively? Isn’t the point of assessments to demonstrate learning?

I see this first hand at home as my daughter, who doesn’t do well with stress anyways, suddenly can’t solve even the simplest problems, taking over a minute to solve even one, so overwhelmed with the thought of the clock forcing her to stop before she was ready.

The opposite is also true, in that the kids who feel good about math, and aren’t anxious about it, perform better.

“Students with higher intelligence had better grades and test scores, but those who also enjoyed and took pride in math had even better achievement. Students who experienced anger, anxiety, shame, boredom, or hopelessness had lower achievement.”

Everything points to the importance of cultivating a joy of learning and math, and the benefits that come with a healthy relationship with it. Yet, timed tests strip this to the core, and replace a willingness to learn, try and grow from mistakes with fear and anxiety about getting an answer, any answer, written down for each problem before the clock sounds.

Finally, kids exposed to timed tests actually are less likely to demonstrate memorization of the facts.

The question remains, why do we insist on doing timed tests? Most teachers would defend their use in that they at least get kids to memorize the facts. Maybe even claim that it encourages the students to practice the facts at home to prepare for these tests.

Unfortunately, the research is so against timed tests, they have even found that the more frequent timed tests are taken, the lower number sense and fact retrieval the students have to show for it.

Continue reading on Medium:

https://medium.com/age-of-awareness/3-reasons-timed-tests-belong-in-the-trash-c49fed81164e