Saber PRO tests, a challenge for education in Colombia

Abstract

The article presents a thoughtful analysis of the state tests implementation as a classification mechanism, a classification that can be understood from several points of view. Firstly, educational institutions must fulfil in with convinced quality standards issued by international organizations who acknowledge the development of the educational process in perfect environments. They leave aside substantial conditions and the difficulties of accessibility to resources of most of the underdeveloped countries in which these tests are applied. Secondly, the most neuralgic aspect of the educational system is that these tests have been used for decades to establish criteria for students to access higher public education. Consequently, students will not have the possibility of entering higher public education if they do not reach the score established in these tests by public universities. That score determines if students are accepted or rejected by the university’s academic offer. In this sense, the educational systems face the uncertainty of reaching the average results in the State tests and international standardized tests because it seems that achieving a distinguished quota in the ranking of the institutions is more important than the quality of education itself. However, the results obtained in standardized tests do not mirror the quality and development of cognitive skills that students have acquired throughout an academic period. The reality of education in Colombia and Latin America differs from the mechanisms, resources, training, and other conditions for which these tests are designed. What is more worrying is that such tests are not structured for the diversity of students with special abilities have in their training process environment.