[Vision2020] High-stakes testing...

[Don Kaag]

Saundra:

I can't speak for anyone but myself on testing and the time it takes, 
but for what it's worth, here's the opinion of a local public high 
school teacher.

"Nickelby" (The Federal No Child Left Behind Act) pretty much requires 
states to put comprehensive progress and exiting tests in place, or 
risk losing federal funding.  Which is how the Feds get the Department 
of Education's nose under the state and local educational tent, 
responsibility and control of education being something notionally left 
at the state and local level by the Founding Founders.

The tiny-minded solons at our beloved "Idaho Ledge" are also into the 
act, with mandated state testing in primary, junior high and high 
school, and high stakes exit testing on the edge of being mandatory for 
graduation from high school.  They are also into putting teachers and 
schools on notice that if there isn't measurable improvement both 
overall and as individual students progress through the public school 
system, both schools and teachers will be penalized.

Here's what I think.  We work in a bureaucratized system that 
desperately needs something to quantify.  You can quantify objective 
test results.  But that does not really indicate that education is 
taking place so much as it indicates fact memorization and acquisition 
of test-taking skills.  There is a body of essential facts in each 
academic discipline that kids have to know in order to be minimally 
competent, granted, but the most important skills they need to acquire 
are how to learn, how to reason, how to take disparate discrete facts 
and synthesize them into coherent theories and integrated ideas, how to 
research effectively and write persuasively and formally in their base 
languagein all of their classes, not just in English.  These things are 
much more slippery than facts to objectively test.  And, as the Romans 
said, "Custodet Quis Custodiet"("Who Will Watch the Watchers?")... who 
writes the tests, who determines what they measure, and if they are 
culture-fair and balanced, and who interprets the results?

Under "Nicklelby" and the current state requirements, teachers and 
schools will be unfairly penalized if students fail.  Why do I say 
that?  Because teachers and schools are the only third of the 
three-tiered educational partnership that bureaucrats can affect.  The 
other two-thirds are parental support of education and individual 
students' willingness and readiness to learn, and neither of those have 
handles that the system can sanction effectively.  The best teacher in 
the world, competent and professional in their discipline, and 
motivated to teach kids, can't succeed if the other two factors are 
absent.  But it is teachers who will take the hit if kids fail, because 
they can be penalized, and the other two facets can't.

Don't misunderstand me... I think some kind of exit test is essential 
to assure that our high school degree is not just a meaningless piece 
of paper and a "social" sop to politically-correct "feel-gooders" who 
want to graduate illiterates because it will make them feel good about 
themselves.  But parents and students must be held accountable for 
failure, too, not just teachers.

As for the time required to test, yes, it does take away essential 
class teaching time from teachers.  But honestly, it is a drop in the 
bucket in terms of the class interruptions we experience on a daily, 
weekly, monthly and yearly basis.  I was frustrated enough with 
purloined class time last year to sit down and compute how many days I 
was able to teach my classes uninterrupted during the school year.  
After itemizing the data from the daily bulletins, which I keep in a 
loose-leaf binder, the answer was slightly more than half.  That counts 
time cut from my classes for assemblies, releases for sports 
activities, and other distractors like half or all-day field trips for 
band, other classes, academic competitions, the one week Arts Fest, 
etc., but not the constant individual pulling out of students during 
class for counseling appointments, meetings with administrators, 
medical and dental appointments, handing out the student newspaper, 
tech crew prepping the auditorium for assemblies, student government, 
etc.  It also doesn't tally the portions of periods I have to give up 
to hold student elections, have counselors talk to juniors about their 
senior year and pre-register for their classes, or anything else anyone 
can think up that takes my class time.

If I sound frustrated, I am.  I once asked my principal, "When is the 
last time we preempted a football game for a History class?"  Sports 
are particularly egregious in the springtime.  With kids involved in 
baseball, softball, golf, track and wrestling and who knows what else 
all being released early for sports, there have been times in 
afternoons in the spring when I simply cancelled class for the 4 or 5 
students I had left in a section, because attempting to teach anything 
would be a waste of time.  Given that we are in a lightly-populated 
area of the country, and teams routinely travel to places like 
Grangeville and Sand Point, the interruptions of the educational 
process are constant and annoying.  It is a wonder that they have time 
to learn anything at all, given the amount of time I have to teach.

Frustratedly yours,

Don Kaag