We’re a Little Testy, Aren’t We?
It is August so the nightmares will begin. I have had these beginning-of-the-school-year teaching nightmares since my first assignment in 1970. The venues and people in the dreams may change but the themes are usually the same: unpreparedness or lateness. I am late for one of my five classes, or I can’t find the right room to teach in or I forgot my notes or my roll book or my shoes or I can’t remember the lesson. These nightmares probably originated in their form during my student years when I dreamt of missing a class or not being ready for a class or a test…..you know, the fears that drive nerds to the psychiatrist’s couch. One weird fact is that I am retired. I have not directed a class in a few years but I still get those dreams. This is another testimony to the fact that teaching is not simply a job or a profession but a life unto itself.
I remain in touch with a number of educators who are still actively teaching. Some of the younger ones have newer nightmares that do not have to do with being unprepared for class but with the possibility that half their students missed the same question on the standardized test. The teacher is called to task, the entire school staff is mobilized, and the school district spends several million dollars on purchasing books that provide interventions that address that erroneously answered question.
No Child Left Behind, the law mandating testing(thankfully defanged), was the well-spring of this newest nightmare. A veiled attempt at creating a school voucher system, NCLB was not true educational reform. If schools did not make arbitrarily devised progress, the districts would eventually be penalized. NCLB (or, as teachers using gallows humor joked, NCL—No Child Left) was like a general who told his colonel, “Colonel, I want you to take 100 men and take that hill.” The colonel and his company do their best and get halfway up the hill, but the hill is heavily defended and the assault stops. The general then orders his underling, “Colonel. You failed. I am going to take half your men away and half your ammunition and I want you to try to take that hill again.”
Some defenders of the testing mania would argue that “At least after the testing we have identified those students who need the most help.” Gosh, teachers were shocked that economically deprived minority students were having the most academic difficulty. I needed a three day test to tell me that? Duh! Worse, once the students were identified, no help was forthcoming. Imagine going to the doctor to be tested for pneumonia. “Yep. Blood tests confirm you have pneumonia. Come back in three weeks and we will test again.” Returning in three weeks, the physician says, “Yep. Blood tests confirm you still have pneumonia.” Gee, thanks. I visit my neurologist periodically who examines the progress of my Parkinson’s, but he also prescribes medication to address those changes. He doesn’t just say, “Yep. You still have Parkinson’s. Whatta ya gonna do about it?” So why don’t politicians and policy makers understand a fundamental educational principle? To wit: Testing is not reform. Oh wait! I know why!
School districts, panicking over losing federal financial aid because of low test scores, seek help through the purchase of texts and programs that promise to improve certain elements of the standardized test. From The Washington Post’s Valerie Strauss, March 30, 2015: “The four corporations that dominate the U.S. standardized testing market spend millions of dollars lobbying state and federal officials — as well as sometimes hiring them — to persuade them to favor policies that include mandated student assessments, helping to fuel a nearly $2 billion annual testing business, a new analysis shows.” Yessiree, testing is BIG business. I marvel at how many good teachers a district could hire for the amount of money it invests in test improvement. Or how many books or other media that amount could furnish. In my next life I will craft my fortune by designing a test that every high school student must take. I have already begun developing the test but my problem is where to stash it so my next life form will find it.
The other factor in the faux-reform testing craze is our obsession with data. ALL data. Newman, the mail carrier from Seinfeld, says it best. “When you control the mail, you control information.” We measure information about students simply because someone has developed a test to measure that information. Here is an example of how it works, changing the names of the actual skills to preserve their innocence. Reading, that wonderfully complex intellectual activity, is broken down into 600 mini skills each of which is now identified by a test. Say one of those skills is Sub Skill 509, Reading while Blinking. “Oops. Johnny is below proficient on Reading while Blinking,” notes the school statistician. “Johnny is one of my best readers. His comprehension is off the charts and he constantly relates what he reads to his personal experience,” retorts Johnny’s teacher.
“Does not matter. We will have to bring that score up!” So Johnny is plucked from his regular class and dropped into a group of other students with low Sub Skill 509 Reading While Blinking scores. Books are bought, programs are purchased, courses initiated all to address Johnny’s deficiency.
Why do we even bother to assess a student’s ability to Read While Blinking? Because we can. I suspect that you may be one of those contrary types who also expect relevance. Sorry. Imagine if your physician tells you, “We now can test for toenail damage due to exposure to the sun.” You reply, “Will this help me with my Parkinson’s?” “No, but we can test for it soooooo.”
A wise educator once told me that any test is only a snapshot. “It gives a small bit of information and its advantage is that it gives it quickly.” But the snapshot is not the whole picture. And any test contains the test-maker’s agenda. I talked to a person on a committee developing tests for teachers. “I believe there should be at least five questions on Finnegan’s Wake on the English teacher exam. I can’t imagine an English teacher never having read Joyce’s greatest novel!” I can. The SAT’s are designed only for one purpose: to project what a student will do his freshman year of college. (And the validity of that projection has been called into question.) Yet districts and states use SAT scores to evaluate high schools. That is equivalent to performing triage in an Emergency Room based on knitting ability. “Yes, I know your gunshot wound hurts, but, based on the fact you dropped a purl, you are last in line.” Teachers know that there are several forms of intelligence, but the SAT’s focus on only two: linguistic and mathematical. So if your child’s primary intelligence is visual or kinesthetic, he or she has some seriously prepping to do. And, yes, despite the ETS’s protestation that the SAT’s are above and beyond preparation, students and schools spend a great deal of time prepping, especially students who can afford to.
When I administered my first state mandated test, the PSSA, I noticed that there was a section on technology. As an educator interested in using computers in the classroom, I was intrigued. Obviously the test-makers realized the burgeoning role of technology in education. I examined the section. “Here are the contents of 2 CD-ROMS. Answer the following questions about where you would find information on these CD-ROMS.” I remember that all the content on the CDs was related to shoes.
“On what track of this CD would you find places to buy shoes?”
I laughed out loud….during the test! This was not an exam to determine a student’s computer literacy. The only thing it measured was a student’s ability to read a table of contents. This is important because it recognizes another failed effort to “measure” skills through bubble answer sheets. In graduate school one of our friends worked toward her advanced degree in music, specializing in piano. The college evaluators did not sit her down with pencil and paper to evaluate her skill. They put her on the stage and asked her to play the piano! We could do the same thing in our schools—the two obstacles are a lack of will in the citizenry and those powerful testing businesses.
From what I have learned, the tests have improved, leaning toward better measurement of skills, but there is still the tendency to teach skills (and test them) the way we teach and test for content. While conducting a project based learning workshop for teachers a few years ago, a young teacher melted right before my eyes and began crying. My first impulse is to ask myself what I did wrong. “What did I do or say to make you cry, Ms. Jones?” “Nothing. I like this whole concept of project based learning, but when I go back to my school, we have to do this program the district bought: 39 skills in 38 days.” 39 skills in 38 days? Imagine coaching basketball to novice players. “Okay, team, we are going to become proficient in dribbling on Monday, passing on Tuesday, shooting and rebounding on Wednesday, and Thursday is our first game.” Ludicrous, yes, but it is not funny. We are losing teachers. 65% of Pennsylvania teachers leave the profession before their fifth year. Number one reason given is “lack of support.” Another reason is the emphasis on test scores. As one young teacher confided in me, “I didn’t enter teaching to spend most of my time drilling and killing kids to improve test scores. I wanted to educate, to help kids grow intellectually and emotionally.” You cannot teach a million skills in a school year. A few skills are learned, very few, and they are learned over a period of time with lots of practice. Education 101.
Testing IS important. I administered thousands of tests and quizzes over my teaching career, and they usually provided me with the necessary snapshots, but they were not the most important element in my evaluation of a student. Effort, intellectual curiosity, perseverance, collaborative skills and a number of other factors were much more important….though not necessarily measurable. My analogy is the quest to obtain a driver’s license. The written portion of the driving exam is relevant and important. But the onus is on the driver, not the evaluator, and we do not blame the Department of Transportation if our cherub fails. However, the written test is only a snapshot. The actual skill of driving the car is most important. We have to ask ourselves as a society, do we want a nation of good driver’s test takers or do we want a nation of good drivers? They are not the same.
Unless we address two issues we will find ourselves in the midst of an educational nightmare. Schools are still operating on an antiquated structure built in the late forties when most students were prepping to work in U.S. factories. The game has changed, and we must have true educational reform by rethinking what schools must look like. (Hint: repetitive testing is not the answer). Secondly, most districts boast that they follow the data. Then let’s really follow the data. The data tells us that the most important factor which determines whether a child learns or not is the quality of the teacher in the classroom. A poorly prepared teacher will stumble through any course, while a talented teacher will make something good out of a bad program. Radical idea: Sink our efforts into teacher preparation and teacher support.
Unfortunately, American culture would have to develop a radical change in its view of educators. But I can still dream, can’t I?