Critical Literacy and Standardized Testing - Can We Have Both?

Critical literacy and its use in the classroom has been a personal interest of mine ever since I had the privilege of taking a class that dealt with the subject with Prof. James Gavelek. I have since tried to incorporate these literacy practices in my classroom as best as possible. I love working with students to read texts through a myriad of critical lenses, or writing for just as many purposes. Critical literacies help to develop individuals who are inquisitive, and with the thinking skills necessary to be the problem solvers and game changers of the futures.

That said, standardized testing still privileges other literacies, and often leave very little room, if any, for students to truly think critically. Multiple choice, true/false, and prompt-based short answer response questions encourage students to look for finite answers, to answer questions in traditionally structured ways, and to refrain from stating their opinions. If education is to foster critical thinking, there must be some sort of change in the ways in which we assess.

The question, then, is how? How can one measure creativity? How does a teacher measure the degree to which a student questions an author's purpose, the historical influences on a text, or the ways in which different audiences can interpret the same thing?

The Finnish education system (are you sick of hearing about them yet?), relies primarily on formative assessments, and eschews high stakes, frequent summative assessments for one or two diagnostic ones. Instead, Finnish students are often tasked with a problem-to solve or a project to create. World hunger? Walking on Mars? These are a few of the problems Finnish children are asked to "solve" over the entirety of their schooling. Text is made available, and students are encouraged to learn from and teach each other the skills and ideas needed to solve these problems (teachers facilitate). A critical (hah) component of all of this problem-solving is the necessity for students to think critically about the texts they encounter. Why should I believe this author's position on thermodynamics over this author's? Why is this speaker's rhetoric more effective than this speaker's?

Is America ready for such a different means of assessment? Are there any alternatives?