Reflection 2: Teaching to the Test…or is It?
My first thought after reading both the Alsup and Bush (2003) discussion on standardized testing and The International Reading Association’s position statement on high-stakes assessments in reading (1999) was that testing is, surely, the bane of education. Even if we take an anti-testing stance, the bottom line is that the “tests are a reality for many teachers—a reality that affects their professional status, the futures of their students, and their school’s ‘grade’ within a state accountability system” (Alsup & Bush, 2003, 156). So much pressure! Educational policies always seem to stem from an “all or nothing” mentality…whatever happened to the middle ground? I don’t think that all testing is bad; assessments are a necessary and useful tool when used appropriately. The problem is that current policies regarding high-stakes testing and accountability have ventured into the unfair and unrealistic zone. No Child Left Behind (NCLB) sounds great in theory…I mean, who doesn’t want high standards for the learning of all children? The problem comes in practice; how do we ensure high standards for the learning of all children? The easiest, and cheapest, way to assess student learning is through high-stakes testing. Standardized tests give us solid numbers that are easy to compute and compare. But what is the story behind the numbers? Are we seeing the whole picture? I think it is safe to say that we are leaving something out. And then you add in the “adequate yearly progress” component of NCLB, which says that schools must raise student scores in reading and math every year, and we are not only leaving something out—we are completely striking out. There is no way that one single test can give us all the answers. Instead of focusing so heavily on these high-stakes tests, why don’t we spend more time, energy, and money on improving educational practices…like reducing class size, making teacher-education programs more rigorous, and, subsequently, increasing teacher salaries so that they are more in line with new rigorous requirements. NCLB creates a façade that says we care about education in this country. Until we are ready to invest in programs that will really make a difference when it comes to educating our children (meaning investing more in student learning and not just student assessment), we will not accomplish our goal to create high standards for the learning of all children.
That being said, I also think that we have to learn to work in a climate that puts extreme emphasis on standardized testing. If we ignore the tests all together, we are doing our students a serious disservice. I may not agree with how the tests are administered and used, but I still want my students to be completely prepared. The tests are a reality, and responsible educators should make the appropriate accommodations. This ties in with the Alsup and Bush (2003) reading for today on standardized testing (see above quote); the tests are a reality, so how do we cope with them? In the narrative presented in the text, the teacher responded to standardized tests “carefully and systematically” (p. 159). I felt like this teacher’s reaction to high-stakes testing was appropriate and commendable. I disagree with the responding teacher who felt like the narrative might suggest that “we should completely change our classes in order to achieve higher test scores” (p. 160). It sounds to me like, regardless of what prompted it, the teacher was only implementing good, solid teaching practices. She focused on different aspects of good writing independently. I can attest to the benefits of using this method of instruction. Writing can be overwhelming for students, so I have found that deconstructing writing tasks, like the teacher in the narrative suggests, makes the writing process more manageable for them. So my question is: should we even worry about teaching to the test? If we use good instructional practices, won’t our students inevitably be prepared?
