Sometimes, I can’t help but feel like I’m being chewed up and spit out by the public education system in this country.
There are just so many things wrong with it. When I really stop and take it all in, it’s completely overwhelming. Incompetent administrators, teachers, and politicians running the show without any opposition at all. Budget cuts. Pacing guides. Endless assessments. Curricula that don’t actually teach my students anything. And always the inexorable, inevitable march towards D-Day: the CST at the end of April. Nothing else matters besides those test scores.
When did all of education become represented by a single number? I don’t have the energy to debate the ins and outs of standardized testing at this point. I think some testing must be a necessary evil- just like a truly standards-based education. Accountability is very important.
But here’s the thing. It’s February. The CST is at the end of April. I just counted- I have 39 instructional days until that exam. Now, personally, I don’t think of the CST as part of my Big Goals. But to my school district, those test scores are all that matter. It doesn’t matter to them, the state of California, or the federal government that half of my students came to me reading on a Kindergarten level. It doesn’t matter that those students have grown nearly a year in reading already. Nope, that doesn’t matter, because they still won’t be considered proficient on that stupid test.
Surely there must be some better way? Just as there are plenty of flaws in teacher training programs, and there are clear ways to fix them, so also there must be ways to fix this assessment and accountability quagmire we have gotten ourselves into.
I think one major change needs to be that we focus on a growth model. Assess the kids at the beginning and end and see how they’ve grown. Give formative assessments throughout the school year that are actually meaningful (this is a key word here) and then have a school-wide, non-judgmental collaborative talk about the results. Did the students learn what we wanted them to? Yes? Awesome. No? What will we do next?
And for Heaven’s sake, stop this nonsense of goals like 100% of students will be considered advanced. Since when did 100% of people do anything the same? I think it’s a lot more reasonable to say that 100% of students will meet their growth goal. It’s differentiated for each kid- a kid that starts on grade level will end above grade level. A kid that starts just below will end on grade level. And a kid that starts super below will end just below. No, it’s not a perfect world. But, consider child development. Some of us walked and talked at an early age, and some of us took a little longer to figure it out. As long as each child is still making their growth goal, then we are doing our jobs.
I’m not a miracle-worker. I don’t pretend to have all the answers. But I do know that I can be very effective in my teaching when I don’t have somebody breathing down my neck every five seconds about test scores. Shut up and let me teach!
