RIP The Week That Was Wasted

Dear students,
I’m sorry. I’m sorry we wasted your time this week. Sorry you had to sit and wait and wait and wait while your peers finished the exam that takes everything else you do in school and belittles it. Sorry you’ve been brought up in the generation of test, test, test where teach, teach, teach means nothing unless it culminates in Commended.
I’m sorry I had to look at you and say “no talking, no questions, no, no, no” unless, of course, your question was could you read a book when you were done.
I’m sorry I had to break out the teacher look when the entire class was done within 90 minutes, and yet you had to sit silently for 4 hours in your perfect little rows of 5X5, facing forward in classrooms covered in butcher paper so you wouldn’t actually learn something.
I’m sorry the politicians we elected listened to business owners and testing companies instead of educators about how best to ensure you are learning.
I’m sorry I didn’t stand up earlier and say enough is enough.
I’m sorry I didn’t educate your parents on what the test-only culture was doing to our classrooms.
I’m afraid now I might be too late. But I won’t be silent, and neither will most of your other teachers.
Something has to change. I’m sorry it won’t change in time to make a difference for you.
And, yes, I realize the test is done. I realize that you’ve been brought up in a culture that says the test is all that matters. But, dear students, that is wrong. And while the test is done, class is not.
I’ll see you Monday. I might not be able to recapture a week of lost learning, but for the next four weeks, we’re going to learn without the pressures of the test. Hopefully, the teacher look can be put away until next year’s week of no, no, no. No learning, no questions, no real answers other than A, B, C, D.
If you’d like to bring a book for downtime, AWESOME. I have some suggestions for you, and our library is fantastic.
Perhaps we’ll have a wake for the week that was wasted.

I Just Thought Fahrenheit 451 Was Sci-Fi

The following CHILLING conversation between teachers, k-12 and higher ed, took place on my Facebook page last week. I’ve included my original post so readers understand what started the narrative. Read it all. It won’t take long.

My original post: From TCEA 2012 Dr. Howie DiBlasi
The skills today’s business leaders say we need to be teaching

•Communications skills
Information and communications skills
Effective Communication
Presentation skills
Use digital technology and communication tools to
Oral and written communication
———————————–
•Inventive/Critical Thinking
Thinking and problem-solving skills;
Creative problem solving
Critical and analytical thinking
Critical Thinking, Problem Solving, and Decision Making
“Thinking outside of the box” – creativity and innovation
Facilitate and Inspire Student Learning and Creativity
Creativity and Innovation
———————————–
•21st Century tools
Use 21st Century tools to develop learning skills
Teach and learn in a 21st century context
Use 21st Century Assessments that measure 21st Century Skills
Design and Develop Digital-Age Learning Experiences and Assessments
Promote and Model Digital Citizenship and Responsibility
Digital Age Literacy
Technology Operations and Concepts
Ability to apply discipline knowledge and concepts
———————————–
•Creating global citizens
“Knowing more about the world” – creating global citizens
Teamwork
“Developing good people skills” – teamwork
Learn academic content through real-world examples
Model Digital-Age Work and Learning
Productivity and Professional Practice
Collaboration skills and projects
———————————–
•Information literacy
“Becoming smarter about new sources of information” – information literacy
Collect and/or retrieve information
Organize and manage information · Interpret and present information
Evaluate the quality, relevance, and usefulness of information
Generate accurate information through the use of existing resources
Information gathering, evaluation and synthesis
Research and Information Fluency
Identify trends and forecast possibilities.
Literacy and numeracy
———————————–
•Personal attributes
Personal attributes such as ambition, self-awareness and an inquiring mind.
Time management and organization
Interpersonal and self-directional skills
Initiative and enterprise
Adaptability
High Productivity
Balanced lifestyle and capacity to manage stress levels
Emotional intelligence; interpersonal skills
Community involvement
Polly Wagner Birkhead A lot of things will have to change in the education world before this will happen!! But I pray the changes do come and soon!!
Thursday at 8:08pm
Mary Beth Lee Me too! Notice there’s one mention of assessment, and I don’t think it’s talking about TAKS or STAAR.
Thursday at 8:10pm
Polly Wagner Birkhead EXACTLY!!
Thursday at 8:19pm
Brittany Norman Even at the college level, we’re sacrificing communication classes. New curriculum regulations are cutting hours from the core, and the state has mandated that those cuts be made from composition and speech classes. Beginning in 2013, instead of 2 semesters of composition and 1 semester of speech, students will only be required to take one semester of composition and then choose between speech or comp for their second credit. That means that students who have trouble writing will probably opt for speech, and students who struggle with public speaking or are shy will choose to write, ensuring that they never have to face their weaknesses. (Also, without second semester comp, there’s no research component in the core ENglish curriculum… so how’s that for information literacy?) I don’t know how, but we have got to find a way to put people who understand education–who LIVE it every day and see what students need–in charge of crafting curricula and setting priorities. As long as a bunch of career politicians–whose primary concern is ensuring their own reelections–are in control, we’re never going to get back on course.
Thursday at 8:31pm
Mary Beth Lee That’s terrifying, Brittany. Who thought that was a good idea? It’s insane!
Thursday at 8:33pm
Brittany Norman According to the National Association of Colleges and Employers (at least the last time I checked), the NUMBER ONE shortcoming of recent college grads–and this is according to some of the country’s major employers–is a lack of communication skills, both written and oral. So what does the Texas legislature do? Cuts down on the amount of written and oral communication training students have built into the core curriculum–and for students in some majors, that’s the only communication training that they get throughout their entire college careers (until/unless they fail the writing proficiency exam at MSU their senior year, in which case they have to take another composition skills course. The exam is given before students can start their “senior-level” hours. This year, the failure rate was absolutely staggering).
Thursday at 8:36pm
Mary Beth Lee The conspiracy theorist in me screams SEE, THEY WANT TO PRIVATIZE ALL EDUCATION. They’re destroying education on purpose. There’s an agenda. But then I shake my head and say, nope, they’re just idiots.
Thursday at 8:40pm
Peggy Browning I agree with the idiocy diagnosis.
Thursday at 8:44pm
Charlotte Wittel Dockery maybe they are idiots with an agenda
Thursday at 8:46pm
Peggy Browning That’s a possibility.
Thursday at 8:46pm
Brittany Norman I think the real problem is that things like communication skills, critical thinking, and creativity can’t be easily quantified, even though they’re very real. The education system in general (at least in the US) has a real problem with misplaced concreteness. If you can’t slap a (grossly inflated) grade on it, give it a percentile ranking, and compare it against “everyone else” (meaning, of course, only other schools in the state/country, because we don’t want to even consider how poorly we’re stacking up against the rest of the world right now) to somehow prove that everyone is “above average” even though that entire concept is ridiculous and impossible, no one wants to hear about it. And as long as the entire system is built around standardized test scores and students, parents, and educators are pressured into seeking “more-than-perfect” GPA’s just to make it into the top 10 percent and get into a state school…. nothing is going to change. You can’t assign a number to critical thinking or communication skills, which means… you can’t attach a corresponding dollar value to it.
And I know I’m rambling and going off on a major rant here, but the education system in the US hasn’t changed a whole lot (other than just becoming more and more grade and test-obsessed) since the 1950s, when a big goal of education, especially K-12, was to train students to become functional and successful cogs in the industrial machine. Our economy is no longer driven by factories. The US exports innovation–at least in theory–and the current system doesn’t provide any space in the curriculum to let students THINK. They learn how to take tests, but the real world isn’t a multiple choice exam–it’s open-ended.
Thursday at 8:53pm
Polly Wagner Birkhead I agree with Brittany! 100%. Well said!!
Thursday at 9:03pm
Brittany Norman This facebook discussion led me back to a paper I wrote in a sci-fi lit class back in undergrad because one paragraph of it fits in perfectly here. I remember re-reading Fahrenheit 451 in that class–I had read it at least a half dozen times already, but had never really focused in on the bleak future Bradbury had been forecasting for education. And… I’m afraid he was right. There are far too many situations these days where our classrooms eerily echo those in Bradbury’s dystopia. The first quote in the following paragraph is one that comes to mind far too often these days.

“Even education is prepackaged and directed toward a quantifiable goal – passing standardized tests. Multiple-choice examinations require no thought or analysis – only memorization. Clarisse’s description of education eerily echoes today’s uninspired classroom environments. “We never ask questions, or at least most don’t,” she laments. “They just run the answers at you, bing, bing, bing…. It’s a lot of funnels and a lot of water poured down the spout and out the bottom, and them telling us it’s wine when it’s not” (Bradbury 30). Class, homework, and sports combine with extra-curricular activities, community service, part-time jobs, and SAT-prep courses. High school graduates walk the stage at commencement with a mind full of facts and simplified answers they were never taught to question. No one learns to think because thought cannot be tested, measured, and ranked. Instead, education focuses on tangible skills. College students no longer crave knowledge; they build résumés. Bradbury’s antagonistic fire chief echoed the sentiments of many degree candidates: “Life is immediate, the job counts, pleasure lies all about after work. Why learn anything save pressing buttons, pulling switches, fitting nuts and bolts?” (Bradbury 56). Enrollment in pre-professional programs skyrockets while the arts and humanities flounder. Graduates yearn for assured employment, functional cogs in the corporate consumer machine. Interchangeable parts require only efficiency, not imagination. When that machine inevitably succumbs to obsolescence, there might be no one left to re-invent it.”
Thursday at 9:44pm

Building on the Values of No Child Left Behind

Since NCLB took hold we’ve seen entire generations of children taught to bubble in answers like pros while losing the ability to problem solve and think critically. Our schools are earning “Exemplary” ratings, and yet, the only subjects students learn are those measured by a test. Testing companies and their lobbyists are earning billions while school districts try to balance budgets. Teachers and administrators across the nation are calling for change, but politicians and lobbyists–most of whom have never set foot in a public school–continue to beat the drum of test, test, test. The test in and of itself is not the problem. Having a tool to measure data is a good thing. The problem is politicians bought into testing company lies that the test was the salvation of education. And then they tied everything we do in education to that lie. Instead of investing in great teacher training and effective strategies for everything from classroom management to best learning practices, we invest in hour upon hour of “How to actively monitor a test” and “keeping the test secure.” (more)
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

(continued) The test has done nothing to improve teaching other than helping teachers learn to analyze data. While that’s not a bad thing, when it comes at the expense of actual student learning, it’s terrible.
Has their been some success in closing the achievement gap? Yes. Would that success happen without NCLB and its test driven theory that has created big business for Pearson, et al? Yes. We were already working on best practices before NCLB. True best practices, not best test taking practices. Reading this post, I have to wonder if the author has even looked at the exit-level tests we’re giving children today. If not, he should. And then he should take a released practice test, publish his results and then talk about how the test translates into real world learning and how NCLB saved education. Talk to professors and they’ll tell you the truth: today’s students aren’t prepared for post-secondary learning, but they are expert standardized test takers. I’m sorry, but I just don’t see standardized test taker as a great career path for any student, regardless of socioeconomic class.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Killing the Profession, One Teacher At a Time

How has the current test driven culture helped public education? The only data driven results I see supporting a test as a solution to our education ills are results gathered and disseminated by testing companies and those with interests in testing companies. Average SAT scores have remained somewhat steady since the 70s. Professors across the board say our students are more unprepared for college than they’ve ever been and business leaders say we need students who understand how to problem solve, work collaboratively and think outside the box. I don’t know when you went to school, but I graduated in the 80s. I didn’t take honor classes. I took the required curriculum, graduated somewhere in the middle of my class and went to my local university, where I started my freshman year with bad grades due to poor decisions but learned through trial and error how to make the grade. I am a successful, productive member of society. I graduated with others who went on to be nuclear engineers, Peace Corps volunteers, CPAs, Cadillac driving Mary Kay Directors. NONE of them took and passed state and federal mandated tests to become successful. Come to think of it, neither did any of the leaders in the US who happened to make their way through public education before tests took over in 1998.

I wrote the above on Facebook today. I’m so tired of hearing how the US has a failing education system, and the test is the only way to see that failure and correct it.
I’m all for using best practices in the classroom: vertical and horizontal alignment, project based learning, portfolios, scaffolding, the list goes on and on and on. Instead of spending so many billions on tests, perhaps public school systems would be better served training teachers to excel on their fields. I learned more from watching master teachers like Sheila Curlin, Anne Patterson, David Knight, Lori Oglesbee and Bobby Hawthorne at work in the classroom than I ever learned from a textbook or a canned lesson courtesy of a textbook supplier. I get more from honest student feedback on evaluations than I do from the 1 or 2-day observation from my admin. Aside: My administration team rocks. They are the BEST ever, but those evaluations aren’t all that helpful. I enjoy their visits to my classroom because I like to hear their thoughts on my lessons. What would be more helpful: visits from master teachers and novice teachers in my school, and then time for us to share observations from those visits.
My district’s Leadership Academy challenged me to be a better teacher, inspired me to do more in the classroom, gave me tons of tools to use on more than teaching to a test.

Back to my original Facebook post: I went to school in the time before the test. To hear a test is the only way to keep teachers accountable is a slap in my teachers’ faces. I remember four teachers from high school who didn’t do much to challenge me in the classroom. A test wouldn’t have fixed that. What I remember more are the amazing teachers who left a lasting legacy at Burkburnett High School. If I had grown up in the testing world, I’m not sure I’d remember those teachers because I’m not sure they would have lasted in the classroom.

The Only Wrong Answer: Silence

Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter. –Martin Luther King Jr.

I never expected my Plea From a Teacher letter to go viral. I blog about education issues all the time. I even helped lead a local Save Texas Schools rally last year. The fact that so many people (around 3000 that I know of after less than 48 hours) have read the post and shared it by retweeting, posting on Facebook, commenting here on the blog or privately, gives me hope that we can change the direction of education today.
If you’re in Texas, the Save Texas Schools rally is in Austin March 24 from 11-2:30 at the capitol. You should be there and make your voices heard. We can’t wait for the Texas Legislature to be in session to get involved in the dialogue. We need to be out there now. If you’re not in Texas, get involved in your state.
Also, teachers, make sure you’re talking to parents. Parents are as frustrated as we are. AND don’t believe for a minute this is a teachers vs administrators issue. Trust me when I say administrators at all levels are as frustrated by the state of public education as classroom teachers are.
Current educators need to be the driving force of education reform. NOT business owners, not testing companies, not media pundits. We cannot sit silently while children suffer and school systems collapse. We must be vocal about change. The world has changed and education has changed along with it. Change isn’t necessarily a bad thing.
Finally, remember, tests aren’t evil. Tests are simply supposed to be tools to measure data. When tests drive everything about education, that’s a problem. Check out this link for more on that. Be prepared to be stunned by how we ended up with this test-centered public education atmosphere. I certainly was. Now more than ever I know it’s time to speak up.
SILENCE IS THE ONLY WRONG ANSWER!
Thank you.

Follow me on twitter @marybethleeybnp

Schools Aren’t Failing, Society Is

No, Our schools AREN’T failing. Despite what you read or see on the news, despite what school reformers making a ton of money off the government say, despite what testing companies print, our schools aren’t failing.

Our SOCIETY is failing.

A few facts:

• 1. According to Custodial Mothers and Fathers and Their Child Support: 2007, released by the U.S. Census Bureau in November, 2009, there are approximately 13.7 million single parents in the United States today, and those parents are responsible for raising 21.8 million children (approximately 26% of children under 21 in the U.S. today

• 2. In the most recent Census Bureau statistics, 2.4 million of the nation’s families are maintained by grandparents who have one or more of their grandchildren living with them–an increase of 400,000 (19 percent) since 1990. These families comprise 7 percent of all families with children under 18.

• 2b. Slightly more than half (1.3 million) of these 2.4 million grandparent-maintained families contain both grandparents; 1.0 million have only a grandmother; and 150,000 have only a grandfather.

• 3. Nearly 15 million children in the United States – 21% of all children – live in families with incomes below the federal poverty level – $22,050 a year for a family of four. Research shows that, on average, families need an income of about twice that level to cover basic expenses. Using this standard, 42% of children live in low-income families.

• 4. – Illicit teen drug use as of 2003.
* 8th grade — 30.3%
* 10th grade — 44.9%
* 12th grade — 52.8%

• 5. While no national data on the extent of truancy exists, we know that in some cities unexcused absences can number in the thousands each day. here are some statistics that have been gathered:
Studies have shown that two-thirds of male juveniles arrested while truant tested positive for drug use.
According to one confidential survey, nearly 1 in ten 15 year olds were truant at least once a week.

These facts can’t be blamed on teachers or schools. When I was in school, dropouts were a fact of life. A friend of mine got married and had a baby when she was 16. She quit school. It was just the expected. Years before that, my father-in-law quit school in 8th grade to go to work. It wasn’t that long ago that special needs students were sent to the hallway Or a closet sized classroom to work on their own. They certainly weren’t expected to master objectives in a class or on a test. And students whose first language was anything other than English were simply out of luck in our schools.

I don’t want to go back to a time where the above are considered acceptable, but to compare our schools today with those of the past on a side by side scale is ridiculous. It’s like comparing apples to cars and saying while they’re both red, one sure does taste bad.

Can our schools get better? Yes. I don’t know a single teacher or admin who isn’t on a constant search to improve. Will they get better by following Race to the Top, administering a new standardized test, encouraging vouchers and privatization? No. But people who have nothing to do with educating children will get rich(er) selling people on the idea that that they’ve got the cure.

Cited:

1. http://singleparents.about.com/od/legalissues/p/portrait.htm

2. http://ohioline.osu.edu/ss-fact/0158.html

3. http://www.nccp.org/topics/childpoverty.html

4. http://www.teendrugabuse.us/teendrugstatistics.html

5. http://parentingteens.about.com/cs/troubledteens/a/truancy_2.htm

The Problem With Testing….

Most teachers are amazing at their jobs. Simple fact. I know it’s hard to believe in the face of all the “bad teachers are ruining our country” politicking out there, but it’s true.
The thing is most teachers are teaching to a test right now. Not because we want to but because we’ve been told we have no choice.
I’m not against a test. I think it’s a good idea to have a checks and balances at the end of the year to see how kids are doing. I think it’s a good idea to have a set of standards your supposed to cover. The problem is politicians have embraced the idea that the test holds all the answers.
The test was supposed to “fix” public education. Unfortunately, that’s like going to the doctor because you’ve been diagnosed with cancer and having the doctor pull out the stethoscope and saying “all better now.”
The test is a diagnostic at best.
It’s not a cure.
REAL education reform is hard. It’s messy. And it takes a lot of time and planning and hours of teacher input.
Real education reform isn’t a test.
Real education reform is measured in multiple ways.
Real education reform needs to be developed and implemented by teachers and championed by politicians.
But for now, education reform is eduspeak for a new, more expensive set of tests that will continue us down the path to mediocrity.

From Work Today, Love it!

My dentist is great! He sends me reminders so I don’t forget checkups. He uses
the latest techniques based on research. He never hurts me, and I’ve got all my
teeth, so when I ran into him the other day, I was eager to see if he’d heard
about the new state program. I knew he’d think it was great.

“Did you hear about the new state program to measure effectiveness of dentists
with their young patients?” I said.

“No,” he said. He didn’t seem too thrilled. “How will they do that?”

“It’s quite simple,” I said. “They will just count the number of cavities each
patient has at age 10, 14, and 18 and average that to determine a dentist’s
rating. Dentists will be rated as Excellent, Good, Average, Below average, and
Unsatisfactory. That way parents will know which are the best dentists. It will
also encourage the less effective dentists to get better. Poor dentists who
don’t improve could lose their licenses to practice.”

“That’s terrible,” he said.

“What? That’s not a good attitude,” I said. “Don’t you think we should try to
improve children’s dental health in this state?”

“Sure I do,” he said, “but that’s not a fair way to determine who is practicing
good dentistry.”

“Why not?” I said. “It makes perfect sense to me.”

“Well, it’s so obvious,” he said. “Don’t you see that dentists don’t all work
with the same clientele; so much depends on things we can’t control? For
example, I work in a rural area with a high percentage of patients from deprived
homes, while some of my colleagues work in upper middle class neighborhoods.
Many of the parents I work with don’t bring their children see me until there is
some problem and I don’t get to do much preventive work. Also,” he said, “many
of the parents I serve let their kids eat way too much candy from an early age,
unlike more educated parents who understand the relationship between sugar and
decay. To top it all off, so many of my clients have well water which is
untreated and has no fluoride in it. Do you have any idea how much difference
early use of fluoride can make?”

“It sounds like you’re making excuses,” I said. I couldn’t believe my dentist
would be so defensive. He does a great job.

“I am not!” he said. “My best patients are as good as anyone’s, my work is as
good as anyone’s, but my average cavity count is going higher than a lot of
other dentists because I chose to work where I am needed most.”

“Don’t get touchy,” I said.

“Touchy?” he said. His face had turned red and, from the way he was clenching and
unclenching his jaws, I was afraid he was going to damage his teeth. “Try
furious. In a system like this, I will end up being rated average, below
average, or worse. My more educated patients who see these ratings may believe
this so-called rating actually is a measure of my ability and proficiency as a
dentist. They may leave me, and I’ll be left with only the most needy patients.
And my cavity average score will get even worse. On top of that, how will I
attract good dental hygienists and other excellent dentists to my practice if it
is labeled below average?”

“I think you are overreacting,” I said. “Complaining, excuse making and
stonewalling won’t improve dental health… I am quoting from a leading member
of the DOC,” I noted.

“What’s the DOC?” he asked.

“It’s the Dental Oversight Committee,” I said, “a group made up of mostly
laypersons to make sure dentistry in this state gets improved.”

“Spare me,” he said, “I can’t believe this. Reasonable people won’t buy it,” he
said hopefully.

The program sounded reasonable to me, so I asked, “How else would you measure
good dentistry?”

“Come watch me work,” he said. “Observe my processes.”

“That’s too complicated and time consuming,” I said. “Cavities are the bottom line, and
you can’t argue with the bottom line. It’s an absolute measure.”

“That’s what I’m afraid my parents and prospective patients will think. This
can’t be happening,” he said despairingly.

“Now, now,” I said, “don’t despair. The state will help you some.”

“How?” he said.

“If you’re rated poorly, they’ll send a dentist who is rated excellent to help
straighten you out,” I said brightly.

“You mean,” he said, “they’ll send a dentist with a wealthy clientele to show me
how to work on severe juvenile dental problems with which I have probably had
much more experience? Big help.”

“There you go again,” I said. “You aren’t acting professionally at all.”

“You don’t get it,” he said. “Doing this would be like grading schools and
teachers on an average score on a test of children’s progress without regard to
influences outside the school, the home, the community served and stuff like
that. Why would they do something so unfair to dentists? No one would ever think
of doing that to schools.”

I just shook my head sadly, but he had brightened.

“I’m going to write my representatives and senator,” he said. “I’ll use the school analogy- surely they
will see the point.” He walked off with that look of hope mixed with fear and
suppressed anger that I see in the mirror so often lately.

One Size Fits All Never Works

The reality is tests aren’t bad. Nor are they good.
Tests are instruments to be used in the collection of data.
It’s a major problem when they become the be all end all of education. Or when they’re seen as potential saviors of a system believed to be failing.
It’s what’s done with the data that counts, and it’s how we get that data that matters.
If students spend all their time working toward mastery of the test, we end up where we are now with everything in education decided by a number on a test made by multi-billion dollar businesses with lobbyists working to keep the test the all-mighty of edu-speak.
The test that has resulted in students who college professors universally say are far less prepared for post-high school work that the students who made their ways to higher academia before the test.
But it’s not the test’s fault. It’s politician’s fault and those in charge of education who want easy answers when there are no easy answers to be found.
Our nation is changing.
Poverty is on the rise. Homelessness is running rampant. Immigrants who speak languages other than English and special needs students are in every classroom.
On top of that major budget cuts are shaking our very foundations.
A test can’t help educators figure out solutions to those issues. It can only measure data.
Other countries educate their best and brightest. We educate all students. And then we come under fire when our numbers don’t match up.
This week several states have announced they’ll be awarding merit pay based on a test average. If this becomes the norm, on what exactly will we be awarding merit pay? Is a true master teacher one who is lucky enough to teach the best and brightest students who easily ace the skills deemed worthy of inclusion on the test? Or is a master teacher one like Sandra Scheller? Sandra was my mentor when I started teaching 16 years ago. For years she’s voluntarily taught seniors who’ve never passed the test. If the students show up to school and work with her, they’ll pass. It really works. I taught the test class once and used her curriculum. My students passed, too.
However, that IF part of the equation is a pretty big deal.
Often, seniors who haven’t passed the test are in that position because of truancy issues.
A test can’t measure that.
Sometimes the seniors are in that position because they don’t speak or read English. Sometimes they’re in that position because their mother OD’d in the car they were using as a home when they were freshmen, their dad is a meth head and somehow they’ve ended up caught in the prison of drug use themselves, and they want to get out, but the euphoric forgetfulness of one more high is better than facing the reality they find themselves in day after day after day.
She was one of my students. She failed the test. I saw her a few years ago working at a local grocery store. She was clean, she was healthy and she was going to the local community college. She didn’t graduate from high school. She didn’t pass the test. But she said thank you to me and thanked God for all the teachers she’d had over the years because they were the reason she wasn’t dead.
Again, she didn’t pass the test.
But she sure was educated.
And that education doesn’t amount to anything if all that’s measured is the pass/fail rate on a one size fits all test driven education.

Figuring It Out

I understand the idea of the test. If you’re new to this blog, the test I’m talking about is TAKS soon to morph into STAAR.
I went to school in the 80s. I had the teacher we called “Boring (insert last name starting with B here).” I aced his class. Every day we walked into the room, picked up a worksheet and wrote the answers, typically simple vocab, while he read the newspaper at his desk and told us to shut up. In ninth grade, my physical science curriculum consisted of rewriting the book in spirals and watching World War 2 films every Friday.
The problem: I’m not sure the test stops that kind of behavior. The move to a more rigorous STAAR won’t either.
This book I love called Whatever it Takes compares standardized testing to an autopsy. It says the real challenge schools have is getting involved in the process BEFORE the autopsy.
That’s a thought I can get behind 100%. Only the involvement has to be something OTHER than a test.
The simple fact is, and every bit of research proves this to be true, a test is false reassurance that education is better than it was in the past.
So what can we do?
1. Master teacher critiques. (not administrator. Admins are great. I LOVE mine. But they’re managers now, and most have been out of the classroom for too long to relate. PLUS, anyone can put on the dog and pony show of quality teaching for an announced admin eval.)
Two of the best teachers to ever instruct at my school have moved elsewhere. Anne Patterson is in Highland Park. Sheila Curlin works for a company that helps AP teachers become better AP teachers.
Both should have been in other classrooms helping teachers become better. And their classrooms should’ve been open for observation.
That observation should have been MANDATORY.
Curlin and Patterson could teach teachers more about excellence in the classroom in one lesson than 30 hours of post graduate work.
We have teachers like them on campus still, and we’re not alone.
2. Lesson Plans…and not those silly little papers we fill out with objectives listed. Real plans. With scaffolding. Plans that show how over the course of a unit we will measure student understanding of objectives (not by a test, but by formative assessment. NOT paper, not Scantron, not something created and billed by a multi-billion dollar businesses run by men who have no idea about real education.).
Instead these assessments are found in real discussion, in debate, in playing devil’s advocate, in creative projects. The list goes on.
The plans don’t stop there. They end with teachers looking at the results of their work, looking at the successes and failures and making changes as necessary. AND documenting those statistics and plans.
3. Team Teaching. At least teaming for those students who need extra help. How much more would a student learn if their English, history, science, social studies and elective teachers were using the same over arching idea then covering their subject area. EX: The Olympics. In a social studies class students could cover the history and geography and human element of the games. In math they could do anything from measuring distances/engineering ideas/body mass/mathematical equations that show who wins and/or loses, etc. In English students could study literature from ancient Greece and Rome or even study media reports from the WW2 games or 1987 games. They could compare and contrast games now compared to their origins. They could research. They could write, really write, based on facts and evidence and something other than a cute or touching two-page story about a time they met someone who changed their lives. In science they could study Physics, Bio, Chem, A&P starting with the Olympics.
Take that to art. 2-D and 3-D work that starts with the Olympics focus and spirals out. At the end of the unit, the students totally understand the Olympics, and the concepts they’ve learned have been reinforced from class to class to class. True learning has taken place. Learning that transcends a test.
An awesome master teacher friend of mine used to teach Art History. She always had tons of kids pass that extremely difficult AP test. She always used literature and history lessons while teaching art, and her kids were able to understand art’s place in time and culture because of the spiraling of curriculum to curriculum to curriculum.
This kind of teaching can ultimately be measured by a test, but the test doesn’t drive the curriculum.
The kind of education above isn’t easy. It cant be simplified to pass/fail. It requires real collaboration, not just a few words on a piece of paper, not hours and hours out of a school year sitting at a desk with a no. 2 pencil, a test booklet, answer document and certified educator acting as test administrator instead of a qualified professional who has spent YEARS learning the craft of teaching.
I read once that REAL education change won’t happen until we quit trying to change students into widgets, nuts and bolts. I believe that. I hope others do, too, before it’s too late.