Sunday, February 7, 2010

TESTING VERSUS TEACHING (TO THE TEST)

CLASS: TEST TODAY!
A Poem By Marilynn Anderson

Tell me everything you know: Do it in ten words, or so.
Answer every question well. It's five minutes till the bell.
Take your time, but do it fast. If you think too long, time will be past.

Here is the sixth in a series of nine articles discussing an education wish list of New Year's resolutions from the December 27 blog. Is teaching to the test fair? Re-evaluate standardized testing. Remember that kids come in with different skill levels and social experiences. The playing field is not level, and the "one test for all" is not a fair assessment of student academic growth, or school achievement.


Personally I like tests. I liked taking them as a student and I liked giving them as a teacher. As a learner I loved papers returned with a bright red "A" or 100% at the top. At some point there were achievement tests and end-of-year spelling tests, the latter being my favorite. There was no particular angst involved probably because I had no fear of failure. I don't remember any pressure by the teachers, and there was certainly none by my parents. They just assumed I would do my job and do it well. Although my father, a hard working farmer who also ran a state highway crew, wouldn't have recognized the term, it would now be called "parent expectation-student achievement."

I certainly don't remember spending day after day learning material that would be on some future test. But then the teachers didn't have the same pressure to perform in order to be considered successful. Instead the days were filled with new adventures in reading, writing, arithmetic, penmanship, art, singing, finger painting, spending time in the library and playing with friends. Recesses were filled with acting out fairy tales, roller skating, jumping down several concrete stairs at a time to show that I could, and playing games like London Bridge or Red Rover, Red Rover Let Johnny Come Over! To this day the smell of waxed floors and crayolas sends me back to that magical time.

In later years, as a mother of elementary school children, I accepted standardized testing as part of the educational experience. At that time fourth grade students received scores on a spring CAT test that compared them with each other in the district and nationally. Like other mothers I viewed the results with either pleasure or worry, depending on the results. There was always some secret pride in seeing that my children were above grade level in most areas - math occasionally being the exception. I recall a test given again several years later - certainly not every year as it seems to be these days. I have no idea what kind of teaching to the test was administered then. I only know the subject was not a topic of conversation among parents.

It was in the mid 1980s, when I finally had my own classroom, that I looked at standardized testing a little differently. I began to understand the correlation between teaching ability and standardized testing results. For a couple of years the results were excellent and I was understandably proud. It was only when I arrived in an inner city school where many students struggled with social issues like poverty, homelessness, incarceration and the like, that the scores suffered. At about that same time pressure was put on the teachers to "get those scores up" so that we could be seen as doing our job. Schools with high scores attracted more parents, while the lower scoring schools often received students whose parents were naive about placement or didn't know how to work the system. At one point, our principal arranged to bring in a bunch of special education students to bring up school enrollment. The selling point for the staff was that many extra classroom assistants would be accompanying them. We did get the students minus the assistants. Some of these mainstreamed children were unruly and disruptive, and classroom teachers spent many valuable teaching minutes on managing behavior. That, in turn, took a toll on later test results.

Knowing the importance of good scores I set about trying to figure out how to raise scores without directly teaching what was on the test. From looking at previous tests I knew the format, (sections on reading comprehension, punctuation, vocabulary, math computation, problem solving, etc.) and time constraints. About that time we received disposable paper books called Scoring High which were very similar to the standardized test format but with different stories, problems, etc. One would surely have to call this teaching to the test but I didn't see anything wrong with it and still don't as long as disadvantaged students in poorly equipped schools are going to be compared with others in more favorable learning situations. Even with such practice book resources the students are not going to be on a par with their more advantaged peers. Many underserved students do not come to school having rich educational language, experiences and positive family attitudes about education of the more advantaged. The playing field is simply not level. It shouldn't be rocket science to understand that closing that "disadvantage gap" in a school day is almost impossible.

With the advent of the DRA, (a reading assessment given in the fall and again in the spring for grades K-2), another way of comparing students and testing results arrived. I actually like the DRA. You can really see the growth from fall to spring if the students are taught properly and have good reading resources available. I took the material one step forward. I took every single vocabulary word in the various levels and proceeded to write my own leveled books with my students as the main characters and with interesting plots. I copied off each new story and the class had great fun reading and acting out the stories. They were then sent home for practice. This took a great deal of time and effort, and some creative writing as well, but my students' growth on the DRA was worth it.

In all honesty, most teachers do not have the time to do what I did. My children were grown and gone, my husband very understanding. Besides, we should not have to go to such extremes to provide this kind of learning. As I said, the playing field is not level. Either we must devise a testing instrument that takes into account the students' backgrounds and abilities or we must provide needy classrooms with aides and interns or volunteers who have been trained and can work one on one with the children who need it. We absolutely must NOT penalize teachers who are working in these kinds of schools. It is my view that they are most often dedicated, experienced and hardworking.

A word should be added for today's involved parents who rightly want their children to succeed in life, and conscientiously work with their children on homework and other school related projects. Here is a true story about a well educated working mother who was trying to help her fifth grader with some math homework: Frustrated with her inability to help, she googled the question. In amazement she learned that it was from the state's eighth grade WASL test. This is neither fair nor sensible. Hopefully it's an aberration, but it still speaks to the frustration and paranoia that can come because of over-emphasizing test results.

I should add that there is something very wrong with a society that has website after website devoted to topics of test taking lessons, test taking quizzes, test taking breakfasts, test taking posters, test taking word searches, test taking strategies, test taking bingo, test taking survival kits, test taking clipart, test taking services, test taking worksheets and test taking bulletin boards, to name only a few. There is even a book one can buy called Test Anxiety Guru for $99.50.

We have guests from Denmark who are visiting for two weeks. Maria and her husband Mark, who is actually British, have two children, ages three and five, whom they are raising to be bi-lingual in English and Danish. It is clear they like much about the United States, with our wide array of goods and attractions. But after discussing our two systems, and hearing about the education their children can expect as they grow up, I felt a little envious. Shouldn't we spend less time on the pros and cons of teaching to the test, or lessening our anxiety about the test, and more time on learning about what really works around the world? Isn't it time to give our children world class educations modeled on those countries that produce large numbers of well educated citizens? Do we really need to spend money buying books to help us feel less anxious about taking standardize tests? Perhaps, instead, it's time to apply our critical thinking skills to a solution for this very real problem.
 
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BOOK NOOK

Instead of a book I am recommending a web site for you to check out. It is about the International Baccalaureate Schools organization growing world-wide. Wade King Elementary School in Bellingham, Washington is in the process of training all teachers there in order to join the more than 2,822 schools in 138 countries. To see more go to http://www.ibo.org/

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