In this special excerpt from Rethinking Schools' The New Teacher Book, Kelley Dawson Salas shares how her school -- a school "in need of improvement" -- came to terms with the tests.
I began teaching elementary school in 1999, and since then there has not yet been a single year when my school did not require me to do some amount of "test prep" to get my students ready to take standardized tests.
It's a fact of life in today's schools: Kids have to take standardized tests and teachers are expected to prepare them. Federal legislation makes sure that schools whose students do poorly on tests face strict consequences: Parents must be informed that they can transfer to a different school, funds may be taken away, administrators and staff can be replaced. Fear of being punished drives many schools to place a high priority on helping students score well on tests.
But, you may ask, what's wrong with wanting our students to score well on tests? For most of us, it only makes sense that we if we are going to ask our students to do something, we want to help them be as successful at it as possible.
There are lots of potential problems with standardized tests and with the activities we use to get students ready for them. If not kept in check, a narrow, obsessive focus on standardized tests can dumb down the curriculum and make school a boring, lifeless place for both students and teachers.
I've learned that this can happen even in a school where educators are committed to rigorous, child-centered curriculum and opposed to excessive standardized testing. I have found that even though it's difficult, I have to speak up when my colleagues and administrators discuss testing. Otherwise, testing and test prep activities can eat up a large part of the school year and leave little time for real teaching and learning.
Here's how that happened one year in my classroom.
A School "In Need of Improvement"
In September, I learned that my school was on the "schools in need of improvement" list. The test was coming in November, and we needed to get the kids ready fast, so they could do well on the test and we could get off the list. We immediately undertook a drastic change in our fourth-grade program (the grade I teach and the most heavily tested grade in my school). We scrapped what we were doing in reading and math, recruited every additional support staff person available, and began to provide small group test-prep activities in math and reading for two hours a day.
To make room for test prep, we put the district's own math curriculum on hold for two-months: Instead we needed to teach an "overview" of all the concepts that would be on the test. We stopped teaching reading as a subject that integrated content in science and social studies, because we needed to group our students across classrooms, strictly by reading level, to help them make the most progress possible before the test.
Hands-on activities and science and social studies content had no place in this test-prep program. There was very little time left each day once the test prep groups were done, and we had to cut back on the activities that we normally do in the fall, including our study of water quality in the Milwaukee River and our beach cleanup at Lake Michigan.
During the entire fall of that school year, I came to work each day infuriated and demoralized, and went home each night feeling even worse. I hated wasting class time on test prep. I hated feeling like we were racing the clock, cramming as much information as possible into 9-year-old brains before the day of the test.
I resented the fact that I had to participate in all of this simply because I was a fourth-grade teacher. I was angry that I had only had a small voice in the process by which our entire curriculum was hastily revised and our school year was derailed. I felt that our school administrators had mad decisions under pressure. I felt trapped because I didn't agree with those decisions, and yet I was the person that had to carry them out. I thought about transferring to a different grade and even about leaving teaching all together.
I also felt an overwhelming responsibility to my students, especially those who were learning English as a second language. This was the first year they were required to take their tests in English, and on top of everything else, teachers had been instructed to make whatever accommodations they needed m so the test would be as reliable a measure as possible of their academic knowledge. This amounted to translating the test into Spanish, allowing them extra time, and spending lots of time reminding students that they are intelligent even though taking a test in their second language might make them doubt that. I thought the system was horribly unfair for second language learners, and I felt like it was my responsibility to protect them from this unfairness.
We started the testing process in November. It lasted eight school days -- almost two entire weeks. By the time Thanksgiving rolled around, the test was over, and on December 1, we ready to start what we considered our "real school year."
The million-dollar question: Did it work? Well ... we got off the list, but not exactly because of our scores that particular year. While we had been busy doing test prep, our school had filed an appeal based on data from the previous year, and we succeeded in having the "schools in need of improvement" label removed.
A Different Approach
During those three months (nearly a third of the school year), many of my colleagues and I came to the conclusion that the test-prep activities took up too much classroom time and that some of them were not helpful. We met. We debated. And in the end we decided to take a different approach the following year -- one that was far less intrusive into the life of our classroom and, happily, one that allowed us to return to our normal math and science curriculum.
We decided to teach reading as we normally would, but to include a few multiple-choice, "practice-test" type activities, and with some instruction on how to do those kinds of test activities successfully. And we decided that trying to cover a year's worth of math curriculum in two months is just not possible. We went back to using the district's curriculum and pacing schedule but added a strong focus at the beginning of the year on how to solve word problems and how to explain mathematical solutions -- something important to getting good test scores, but also something we definitely want our kids to know how to do regardless.
Through these experiences I learned that striking a balance is key. I know that I cannot ignore the tests or the need to prepare my students for them. I know I need to do some things to familiarize my students with the test format and the types of questions they will encounter. I also thinks it's reasonable to have students experience a simulated testing environment prior to the actual test: Practice runs will help cut down on nervousness when the real testing starts.
What I am not willing to do is to spend every day of the year using multiple-choice, worksheet-type activities simply because "that's what they'll see on the test."
Every school is different, and there is no magic formula for how much test prep to do or how to do it. What is crucial is that teachers and administrators talk with each other about the testing that occurs at each grade level and that they agree on a plan that prepares students sufficiently without overtaking the entire curriculum.
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