The State of State Testing

The state administers mandated standardized testing to all students during a given window of opportunity. Based upon the results of that testing, schools are “graded,” performance is rated, and success/failure assigned. We’ve just completed our mandated testing, and I can’t wait to see the results.

Kids are clever, especially when they either don’t want or don’t care about what is being done. There is no one on the face of the Earth who can make a student do what he or she is committed not to do, the same way that there is no one on the face of the Earth who can stop a student from doing what he or she is determined to do.

As I walked the aisles every 5 minutes, I kept check on progress through the multiple choice questions. At the end of the first 10 minutes of the math section, many of the students were already into the 20s, an amazing feat at best, but more honestly an indicator that they were randomly bubbling 2 questions per minute, which is pretty much standard operating practice during state testing.

I stopped at each desk, cautioned the bubbling student to take the test seriously, to stop the random bubbling, but all that did was encourage more creative bubbling.

I watched as the kids stroked their chins, twirled their hair, fidgeted with the pencil, made amorphous drawings on the scratch paper, in an effort to show determined concentration. Then, when they thought the coast was clear, they would bubble in 3-4-5 consecutive answers. As I made the next tour through the sea of seats and again stopped to gently chide them about speedy responses, they would fiercely whisper, “You’ve watched me work the problems.”

English may have been better, but it’s hard to tell, because I taught my students how to read the questions and find the correct answers, rather than waste time reading the myriad excerpts from obscure literature sources to which few, if any, students can connect. If it’s all about correct responses, I teach them how to determine correct responses or narrow down the options to 2.

Believe it or not, our school’s English Language Arts scores are always our best performance indicators.

We waded through science (2 tests) and social studies after plodding through the math and ELA, and then we were finished for another year. The 4-hour blocks of time set aside for test administration each day were hardly necessary: regardless of the content area, my students were done, done, done within the first 2 hours!

The results will be released from the state, and the community will be aghast at how poorly the teachers are doing their jobs. It will never dawn on the public that the teachers have nothing to do with performance on mandated testing: remember, we can lead the horses to the water, but we cannot make them drink.

Students do not take the testing seriously because it has nothing to do with them individually. If a student failed a course or graduated from high school based on the results of the testing, you bet your sweet ass they would take it seriously; however, since the only use for the testing results is to grade the school’s overall academic performance, at best an esoteric goal to which most students cannot attach themselves, the students simply do not give a damn about the outcome.

They have become automatons who get up, get dressed, go to school (or not), return home, watch videos, hang with their friends, IM until the wee hours, and then get up the next day and do it again. After four years, gimme my diploma so I can go into the real world, get a “well-paying” job, and be the success my parents always knew I would be.

What’s missing in the routine is schoolwork. The kids who tote the books, complete the assignments, come to school prepared, are, perhaps, 10% of the total school population. The rest of the kids treat school as if it were just another job. The student parrots the parents: I am on the clock between 8 am and 3 pm; the rest of the time is my personal time, and I’m not bringing my job home with me. The teacher has to learn a hard lesson: if I don’t cover it during the class, it’s not going to become part of the student’s educational experience.

The textbook is 1100 pages in length, divided into 10 sections, and we pretty much need to cover something in each of the 10 units of instruction. We can hop through it, deleting the majority of the content so we can cover all of the material during class, or we can work through it, both in class and at home, and allow the students to actually learn something.

Today’s society wants the student to complete all of the work during the 55-minute class period, and be prepared for any “well-paying” job a student decides suits him/her for the future. I have so many students who want a “carrer” as a “veteran” because they love animals. There is no more spelling list: that’s a list that is assigned Monday and tested on Friday, with lots of home practice in between. In today’s society, we will use spell check and be done with that! The discussion about different spellings for words with similar pronunciation does a fly-by because one word is as good as another, and the reader can always “figure out what I mean.”

When I can only cover what fits into 55 minutes a day, 90 days a semester, it limits the quality content required to prepare students for their futures, whatever that may be. Society needs to decide the goal: educate the kids or just go through the motions.

The state will release the test results and, once again, the public will be appalled at how poorly the schools are doing, the blame will be heaped onto the shoulders of The Broken Teacher, and life will continue. It has truly come to pass that “We Don’t Need No Education.”