Trust the Test

As much as it would please almost everyone in the country with any first-hand knowledge of education, high-stakes, government-mandated testing isn’t going away anytime soon. Standardized testing is a reality, and, unfortunately, it’s a yardstick against which districts, campuses, and even individual teachers are judged.

In response to the testing onslaught, publishers have rushed to the rescue with test-prep booklets, computer programs, and websites, all designed to help students get ready for the dreaded test. Teachers have latched onto test-prep methodologies such as assigning daily openers containing released test questions, giving practice tests in class, teaching vocabulary lists of high-frequency words gleaned from past assessments, and requiring after-school and on-the-weekend attendance at test-prep boot camps designed to give struggling students more exposure to what they can expect to see in the spring on their state tests.

The result of all this hullabaloo is that kids aren’t really doing much better on these tests and—no surprise—they hate school. When every day of the school year is another tedious encounter with test-prep materials, students have nothing to look forward to but soon learn that there’s lots to dread.

I’m led to believe that the companies we pay millions to construct and field test these state assessments have some expertise in the art of test design. They build these tests to measure student mastery of a subset of the state objectives for the course.    

What would happen if we trusted that the test is actually measuring what it claims to measure and that if we simply taught the skills the state asks us to teach, our students would be fine on the test? I’m willing to take that chance for the sake of students’ love of learning.

The STAAR end-of-course exams in English, for instance, measure, in a fake way, many of the things we do naturally in a well-taught English class. They ask students to comprehend and analyze a variety of texts, to make judgments about the author’s intention, to connect ideas or techniques between texts, and to find textual evidence that supports an assertion. These tests require students to make corrections to errors in essays, just like they would do when editing a classmate’s paper in a writer’s workshop environment. They ask students to examine an essay and make recommendations about organization, word choice, transitions, and clarity, as they would in a writing conference with a peer. Finally, they ask students to come up with an idea and support it in an organized, focused, clearly-written essay of their own—something I hope every English student is doing frequently in class.

It seems to me that if we just teach our students the state objectives, formatively assess to adjust instruction and target students who need extra attention, and build up students’ self-efficacy and dispositions toward the subject, they ought to do fine on the test when spring rolls around.

Taking a practice test that asks students to analyze a poem doesn’t teach students how to analyze a poem. Answering revision and editing multiple choice questions about an imaginary student’s fake essay doesn’t teach more about how to give feedback on a paper than actual writing conference does. A practice test takes hours that could be used in active instruction: teaching state standards, informally gauging student understanding, and reteaching or extending as needed. Taking a practice test is boring. Good instruction isn’t.

Maybe we should trust the test— trust that the test is indeed assessing the knowledge and skills it claims to assess—and devote more of our time and energy to familiarizing ourselves with the standards the test is testing, pinpointing the places where the standards align with our curriculum, strategizing about how to teach the standards and assess our students’ mastery, and developing authentic ways to remediate during class time instead of asking struggling students to carve out time from their busy schedules to get help outside of class.   

Teaching our students how to take the test won’t help them if we haven’t taught them how to do what the test is asking them to do.

It's Never Too Early

It’s Never Too Early

or

What to Think About While You Are Actively Monitoring

It’s likely that at some point in the next few days or weeks you will have several hours during which you are contractually obligated to monitor students while they are undergoing their state-mandated testing. You’re not permitted to be on the computer or your phone; to read; to grade papers; to look at the students’ tests; to write anything; to talk; to listen to music on your headphones; to eat a noisy, stinky, or nut-laden snack; to stand still; to sit for long periods of time; to sneeze; to sigh audibly; to laugh (maniacally or otherwise); to hover over a student long enough to make him or her nervous, to sing; to hum; to line dance; to juggle; to yodel; to take the test yourself; to snap photos; to work a jigsaw puzzle; or to arrange flowers. You get to walk around and think silently and unobtrusively for four or more hours.

What will fill your thoughts during this time? Some of my friends like to complete math problems in their heads. A few compile statistics about their test takers, mentally calculating the percentages by gender, hair style, clothing choice, handedness, etc. Others spend time memorizing the names and ID numbers of the students testing in their rooms. Still others fantasize about what they’d do if they had to opportunity to meet the person who created this standardized test or the legislator who mandated that it be taken.

I have another suggestion.

It’s never too early to start thinking about beginning the next school year. In fact, right now--during this second horrible round of standardized testing--is the perfect time to fill your idle mind with visionary thoughts about what next August can look like.

As you are actively monitoring, think about how you feel about the year-in-progress. What has gone well? What could improve? What is driving you crazy?

Perhaps there’s a new initiative you’d like to try out and have been waiting for the perfect time to do so. Want to redo the way you’ve been starting or ending class? Have you recently become intrigued by the concept of Interactive Notebooks? Maybe you’re an English teacher who wants to launch a full-scale Reader’s or Writer’s Workshop. Or you’ve wanted to be more intentional about incorporating AVID WICOR strategies to engage your students.

By this time in the year, you can clearly see what your beginning-of-school preparations have spawned. Ideally, your students are still enthusiastic, engaged, on-task, risk-taking, controllable, and eager to learn (with just a touch of unavoidable “summeritis”). You might, unfortunately, struggle daily with students who are cantankerous, unruly, discouraged, distracted, and disengaged.       

One of the great things about teaching is that most teachers get a “do over” each year. You greet a new set of students who enter your classroom (and maybe your school) for the first time. The students are full of excitement and apprehension, and you have the opportunity to set precedents, to let them know how things run in your classroom, and to clarify your expectations. Students are malleable and trainable at the beginning of the year. Effective training, like most complex tasks, requires careful prior planning. That’s why it’s never too early to get started.  

Don’t wait until the last days before school starts to try to remember what you wanted to do differently this time around. Spend some time now making your to-do list for beginning next year. Please don’t spend your entire summer vacation planning and plotting for next year; you need and deserve plenty of downtime. But having the pre-made list at the ready will allow your mind to focus quickly on the ideas when August hits and it’s time to ramp up for another school year.

Right now, when you’ve got nothing to do but monitor your students, is the best time I can think of to start composing your mental list. You may even have the time to troubleshoot a few of the problems and work out the kinks in advance.

If you don’t want to think about next year, you can always start thinking about what to buy me for my birthday. It’s only 140 days away, and I’m allegedly difficult to shop for. It’s never too early to start planning.