Not that I did anything different in my morning routine, or that I did anything out of the ordinary when I got to my classroom. The first was much more subtle and surprising.
I agreed with a news article from Texas regarding education.
What? Is that possible? How can it be?
No, really. I have never before read an article about education out of Texas without feeling like it held a deeply flawed view, or perhaps was promoting some sort of twisted version of how school should be.
But today I read an article about Pearson and their stranglehold on the current educational climate in the US. Not only that, but how they have gone out of their way to discredit those who find fault with their standardized testing products. In particular, the article is about the efforts of Dr. Walter Stroup, and his testimony before the Texas State Legislature.
Here's the link to the article: http://www.texasobserver.org/walter-stroup-standardized-testing-pearson/.
If you'd like the summary, essentially it goes like this: Pearson's tests are highly accurate, but not at measuring student learning or student growth. Instead, the tests are highly accurate at measuring a student's ability to take a test. And for this finding, Pearson has largely discredited a tenured UT professor and seems to be doing what they can to end his career.
I suppose I shouldn't be surprised, in that the current educational climate reflects a belief that what schools need is more testing, not more instruction of higher caliber. I teach in a school system that had to conduct a system-wide infrastructure test that lasted roughly two weeks in January just to see if the computer resources in the county could handle the load from state testing. In short, it worked, but just barely. Students were kicked out of test sessions because of computer issues left and right. Teachers had to scramble to keep things running. Essentially the system only worked if enough people could frantically keep the plates spinning to avoid everything crashing down on them.
This took two weeks. State testing will last another 3-4 weeks starting next month. This means that the collective time spent just administering this test is growing. To top it all off, this doesn't even touch the issue that many of the standards are flawed, or developmentally inappropriate, or just outright unrealistic. Tell me why Kindergarteners are expected to know what had previously been taught in 1st grade. Tell me why the term "Rigor" has come to mean "Difficult for the sake of difficulty." Tell me at what point do teachers get to teach what they are supposed to teach.
In many ways, I count myself lucky. I teach elementary music, which means that I do not have a standardized test to administer for my subject area. In previous years this has led to an entirely ridiculous notion that in order to be taken seriously the arts must come up with some kind of test for ourselves. Thankfully this year we have been allowed to use performance assessments based on rubrics and student performance of actual age-appropriate skills.
Hallelujah.
Is it too much to ask that educators be allowed to make educational policy? And is it too much to ask that educators make that policy based on what is BEST for our students? Best as in a truly appropriate educational decision is one that helps students learn, think, and grow? I, for one, do not care what kind of money is in it for testing companies like Pearson. Instead, I care for my students. I care for my fellow educators. I care for the families that see their children stressed out by high stakes testing at the ripe old age of eight. Why should an eight year old child have to worry about performance on a standardized test? How about instead they worry about learning the best approach to solving a math problem, or the type of reading they like best, or what instruments they want to learn to play, or how best to paint or draw, or what physical fitness really means. How about they learn what happened at important moments in history, or where in Europe they can find Austria, or what kind of chemical mixture might cause an interesting reaction?
Who cares about standardized tests?
The companies that write them.
And the politicians who enforce them.
Hopefully those politicians can be shown the way of true education and meaningful learning and assessment before it's too late.
In the meantime, anybody want to make some music?
