By Kristin
When I saw this poster it made me laugh out loud, partly because it's true and partly because when I face where we are as public educators I can laugh or cry.
Here's where we are: there is a clear, definable line between students who are successful on tests and students who are not, and that line divides children not only on the basis of academic achievement but of economic status and race. Poor children don't do as well. Do I want to cry because the injustice of a broken system feels bigger than me, or do I want to cry because the dirty secret is out?
When I read Kathryn Juric's piece, My View: 10 Reasons the SAT Matters, I thought of my students and how far they'll need to go to rock the SAT. I thought of their spring state assessment scores, and how every single one of them is below the standards expected of their grade level. Like earning an International Baccalaureate Diploma or passing Advanced Placement exams, doing well on the SAT is evidence of your academic skill set. It makes the reputation of your high school less significant than your ability. It makes your place of birth, the education of your parents, and whether you or the state bought your lunch inconsequential. It's a test, and it levels the playing field.
My high school didn't make any "Top 100 High School" lists. In 1988, like today, public education wasn't fully funded. What wasn't dusty was rusty. Our lockers had wooden doors that I believe were made in shop class. Every other week, it seemed, Immigration did a raid on the apartments next door and there was an exodus of kids from campus as they fled to find out if their families were safe, were even still there. We didn't have a great band. No one relocated his family to get his children into my school (except, of course, those who were terrified the INS would find them), but in my graduating class there were students who scored perfect scores on the SAT. We were prepared for and pressured to take AP exams. We passed them. We graduated with honors, then went to four-year universities and Ivy League schools. We thought that's what public schools helped kids do.
Did I become a teacher to help kids pass a standardized test? No. I became a teacher because Dr. Melinda Hennessey saved my life with her Things Fall Apart unit when I was in ninth grade. Luckily, she saved my life right before I was expelled, or I might not be here. I almost certainly wouldn't have graduated with honors. Sometimes, teachers need to step up and do what families can't.
I didn't become a teacher for standardized tests and all their thrilling glory, but now that I'm a teacher and the data shows my students who live in poverty are failing tests affluent students easily and consistently pass, I feel compelled to do something about it. Dr. Hennessey chose to teach in one of the most expensive schools in the country. She didn't have to deal with kids who lived in poverty. I have chosen to, and because many of my colleagues feel education can improve lives, they also choose to work with children who live in poverty.
Now I see my graduating class of 1988 with 2012 eyes. I see that most of us who did well were White, Asian or Filipino. The kids whose families stayed invisible to avoid immigration? I don't know how those kids did on the SAT. Probably not so well. I and the kids in my advanced English class were doing okay, and I assumed all the other kids were, too.
Now, I see how those kids are doing. We all do. I see their scores. And because those children are sitting in my classroom, I once again see their faces. I may not like having my worth as a teacher measured by something like a test score, but it's better than hiding a dirty secret and pretending everything's okay. While I didn't go into teaching to help my students pass a test, I think I can do that and also try to save a life. My high school's changed a lot. It's now an International Baccalaureate school. And the SAT? It's changed too. Even a teacher's job description has changed. And hairstyles, they've changed, thank god. But equality still matters, even on tests.
Don’t misunderstand me, Kristin; teaching the whole child is what we should be doing. As long as we’re all doing it. But we’re not.
Like it or not, the curriculum is being narrowed to that which is tested, which at the elementary level means reading and math. In my district we’ve gone from three science units each year to two: a 50% reduction. And to make up for it, they send out a bunch of books about science. Why? test scores; pure and simple.
Of course, the school that’s really on the ropes – low test scores, high free-and-reduced – gets one science unit each year. After the MSPs.
So yeah, I would love to blithely – seriously blithely – teach the whole child. But I can’t.
Excuse me Tom, I meant adverb.
Maren, you’re absolutely right. We need good tests that measure what they’re supposed to measure, and they need to be used in a way that aligns with the purpose of assessment. I see assessments as having two real purposes – “is someone ready to do what’s going to be required” (like a swim test before going into deep water) and “has the student mastered the content or are there things he needs to be taught again?”
The trouble with assessments in Washington State is that they neither decide whether a child should move on to more difficult material or can be meaningfully used by teachers to shape instruction. I just last week saw the scores of children I had last year. Ooops! Too late to reteach “main idea” to Steven!
I’m not particularly troubled by a teacher’s students being assessed in September and then again in June in order to determine how much they learned under her instruction, but nowhere have I advocated for a once-a-year test being used to measure a teacher’s worth. How can the EOC exams, if they’re given to children who haven’t even taken the course the “C” stands for, be meaningful in any way?
“Blithely.” Thanks, Tom. It’s always good to have an adjective that implies I’m lighthearted and carefree about something like teaching the whole child, or about a teacher’s capacity to do more than hit one objective.
I agree with Maren. Tests do a great job of exposing the achievement gap. They do an even better job of showing property values.
As a parent, I frankly don’t much care how well my sons do on their standardized tests, especially since they’re out of grade school and taking classes other than math and reading.
The trouble with blithely thinking that “There’s no reason a really creative, engaging project can’t also prepare a child to ace a test” is that eventually two things happen:
1. Your class will be compared to that of teachers who focus solely on the test. And they won’t look good.
2. Schools with low test scores will enter “turnaround” which entails focusing solely on tests. It’s happening in my district, and it’s ugly.
The fact that standardized tests force us as teachers to think about how to reach every kid is clearly a strength.
However, the fact that standardized tests are taken by every student, no exceptions, is also a downfall. I just went over the individual results of the biology end-of-course exam for students in my school. Many of the students who did not pass had either not taken biology, or had taken biology only for a short time. However, because of the standardized nature of the exam, they still had to take it. There were a variety of legitimate reasons they had not been enrolled in biology. It was disheartening that they had to take the biology EOC. One size fits all standardized tests for school systems with programs like integrated science, or for students with a variety of science interests, just don’t work.
So yes, standardized tests expose an achievement gap–but the results also expose flaws with the standardized testing system itself.
Mark, I think the situation you describe was much more prevalent before, when children earned diplomas without learning anything. I’m not sure how you can “give the answer” when your student will eventually be sitting on his own, taking a test you don’t get to grade. That seems to me to be a safeguard against exactly the kind of situation you describe.
There need be no such thing as “teach to the test.” Any teacher whose entire year is filled with test-prep curriculum is choosing to work in an oppressive situation. There is enough time in the year to prepare students for the tests they’ll need to succeed on and also to nurture their growth as citizens, as people, and creative beings. There’s no reason a really creative, engaging project can’t also prepare a child to ace a test. That’s like saying running on a trail isn’t going to improve your 5K time. Few competitive athletes spend every second doing what they’ll do in their assessment.
Amethyst, I’m glad you brought up the valuable joy of those lessons that push a child’s ability to think critically. They are essential.
Mark– that’s an interesting take, and maybe that’s where some of the sense of entitlement that I see among students comes from. I often see students become frustrated and refuse to try when an assignment is open-ended (purposefully, because there are many manifestations it can take).
Not all students give up by simply deciding that they don’t understand; many persist, but often it is the students who have the role models in their families who have persisted before them and who show them how to be more proactive and remain “on my radar” in a positive way by asking for further guidance in their work. Often, but not always, there is a socioeconomic trend in which teenagers are prepared to work with me on more abstract, less defined tasks.
Kristin, I think your point is provocative that the standardized tests take these trends and put them out there on the table. Make us examine the truth. The tests don’t tell us everything about students’ abilities, but you are right, when the same trends are there year after year, and the tests predict success in college, we have to acknowledge the inequities that lead to those trends.
I know your emphasis is on poverty versus privilege (my oversimplification, not yours)., but a student said something to me today that stuck hard. I was helping a small group with their Algebra homework during 6th period, and one boy said “man this was so much easier last year when Mr. X would just do our work for us!” I laughed, and without thinking said “Maybe that’s why you’re in the situation you’re in right now!” Thankfully, he laughed and didn’t take offense, and he knew what I meant: He hadn’t learned anything because he had been trained that if he waited long enough, someone would just do it for him. He is a kid who is probably not going to rock the SAT and will not end up on an AP track, but he has said to me over and over during just these first two weeks of school that he has every intention of passing all his classes this year. And he’s walking the talk–I see him hanging with his buddies before and after school and during lunch, and he always has a pencil in his hand and a book open, paying just enough attention to the buddies to not be too uncool, but also devoting attention to his work.
My real point: I suspect that well-intending teachers, intervention programs, and special helpers have mistaken “giving the answer” for “learning.” Because of such pressure to give the answer, too many have been trained like this kid: wait long enough and someone will do it for you because we can’t fall behind on the pacing calendar and the test is coming up… I think that some teachers have a blind spot for the kids for whom they consciously or subconsciously have low expectations–and with a heart in the right place “give to” one student what we’d “expect from” another. (If that makes sense…)