Link Test From Mexico

Educare-Educere.

THE TEST "LINK" OR THE WAY OUT OF THE FUND.

Gabriel Hernandez Santamaria

gsanma@prodigy.net.mx

In the past two years the results of the National Achievement Test in Educational Centers "LINK" has attracted comments from clear-cut Manichaean, on one hand the teachers are bad and good is the test. Let's see:

Spokesmen for the education authorities, and even the authorities themselves, who have even come to reward those schools that achieve high score and condemn the teachers when the results are low. Ester type of conclusions drawn by the outcome of an instrument that no one has stopped to analyze from the field of education, shows that in our country, education is valued more for form than substance.

To explain the statement that what is valued is not the bottom of national education problem, do a brief educational profile of the instrument to evaluate LINK.

1. This is a test based on the principle of assessment standards: a student are valued against the curriculum.

2. It is based on the curriculum, what matters is the program that the student knows how to use knowledge to solve existential problems. An example is the reagent for 3rd. Grade poses a challenge like the following: "A young man goes to the store and buys goods for $ 37.00, paid a $ 200.00 ticket What operation will be performed to get to know story of change?:

a. 200 + 37 b. 200 to 37 c. D. 200/37 200 37. Everyday life demands results, not operations.

3. It is an instrument that is only responsible for checking the knowledge retention process and does not examine important aspects of personality and knowledge construction which must be considered in any evaluation process.

4. Its structure is based on the current neobehaviorists learning postulated by Skinner and Bloom so popular in the seventies of last century and superseded by the current widely held by Piaget's genetic epistemology and Ausubel's meaningful learning and constructivist currents Vygotsky, Bruner and Novak mainly.

.5. On the other hand, its a wide coverage (which is very expensive, it is estimated that a sum is spent over 200 million pesos) and frequency of application can not calibrate it according to the theory test which makes it prone to evaluative inaccuracies, something that does not happen EXCALE PISA tests.

6. It appears as a partial test because it is who prepares the General Secretariat dependent Assessment of Basic Education of the SEP, which is responsible for ensuring educational quality improvement of the level.

7. Their results are not intended to implement corrective and preventive measures for improving educational quality, but simply to give scores for Manichaeism and retention of program content or curriculum.

8. It is a structured instrument with an outdated educational approach, used as the sole form of assessment of educational achievement in schools.

9. The next point is outside the educational profile of the instrument, basic education children have the best view of ENLACE test value, they call it "test the pellets."

On the other hand it is paradoxical, and even pathetic, you are requiring the teaching of basic education:

-To undertake their teaching practice on the basis of the generation of skills. Claiming the application of methodologies for the construction of meaningful knowledge, usually by means of the technique of a planning projects and teaching where assessment is part of the learning process.

- What students need to be evaluated nationally by an instrument that asks what is the change in behavior or achievement of cognitive objectives.

The problem of improving the quality of education lies not in the results of an assessment tool (Form), but in the transformation of the education system structure (the Fund), which claims to see and try to education and schools education as an integrated system where all components must interact harmoniously.

Finally, if education is multidimensional assessment, mandatory, must include all the elements involved in it to make it relevant and quality, otherwise, as with LINK, you fall into the simplistic reductionism and the dysfunctional Manichaeism leads to childish illusions.