More Than a Score (31 page)

Consider standardized testing—the latest educational fad sweeping the nation. They are the make-or-break assessment that determines a school's status with the department of education. They are the numbers published in major newspapers across the country. They are the scores real-estate agents tout when verifying a neighborhood's value. Corporate education reformers believe that if you make children take more futile tests and attached higher stakes to them, that somehow leads to better outcomes.

Educator Marion Brady once wrote in the
Washington Post
, “Even if standardized tests didn't cost billions, even if they yielded something that teachers didn't already know, even if they hadn't narrowed the curriculum down to joke level, even if they weren't the main generators of educational drivel, even if they weren't driving the best teachers out of the profession, they should be abandoned because they measure the wrong thing.”
1
No standardized, multiple-choice test can possibly assess creativity, problem-solving, imagination, critical thinking, and collaboration.

What are the ramifications for the obsession with high-stakes, standardized testing? One is the waste of nearly two billion dollars spent annually on testing that could have been better allotted to fighting poverty, for example. Another is that for the first time in decades, new research found that US creativity levels of young children have been on a sharp decline since the 1990s.
2
That is almost surely because of the increase of testing in school. Test scores are also internalized by children. They begin to think of themselves as failures or successes. When so many of the most brilliant and creative people on the planet have reportedly performed poorly on tests in school, why do we, as a society, continue to have a fetish for them? It was indeed Frederick Kelly, the inventor of the multiple-choice test, who later admitted that it was a “test of lower order thinking for the lower order.” Tests in general are simply the worst way to measure learning.

And even when school days revolve entirely around testing, whether it be created by teachers or the state, students still perform poorly. In a talk, Cevin Soling, director of the remarkable documentary
The War on Kids
, put it succinctly:

Schools only test what they teach students and the remarkable thing is that despite this insanely dishonest approach, schools completely and utterly fail at what they spend all of their time doing, which is teaching children how to pass their test. To subject home schooled and unschooled children to these kinds of tests is quite absurd, because they have different objectives. Yet on the whole, they still greatly outperform compulsory schooled children. That is like beating the house in Vegas. Schools are like casinos run by imbeciles. They create the game, regulate the game, manage the game, and somehow they still lose. The incompetency of rigging a system that still fails to produce a desired outcome cannot be understated.
3

Let's add ten years to my first testing incident and arrive at my senior year at Syosset High School in Syosset, New York. At the beginning of the school year—fall 2012—the school district approved a new teacher evaluation system. Earlier that year, New York governor Andrew Cuomo, after a lengthy feud with the state teachers union, came to an agreement over a comprehensive teacher evaluation system for the state. The arrangement was made so that New York State would be eligible to receive $700 million of Race to the Top funds, a national sweepstakes spearheaded by President Obama that allocated monies to states that adopted his education policies. Under the new system known as the Annual Professional Performance Review (APPR), 40 percent of a teacher's evaluation would be based on standardized test scores, while the remaining 60 percent would be based on subjective measurements, like classroom observations and student surveys. Then, teachers would be sorted into four categories: ineffective, developing, effective, or highly effective. However, there's one catch. In the bill, it states: “The new rating system would prohibit a teacher or principal who is rated ineffective in the objective measures of student growth from receiving a developing score overall.” In other words, if a teacher is unable to raise their students' test scores for two consecutive years, even if he or she is deemed highly effective on the subjective measures, the teacher could be fired.

That fall, the Student Learning Objective (SLO) exams were unleashed on all the students in my school in every subject, including art, music, and physical education. Yes, in gym class, multiple-choice exams with colorful green Scantrons were doled out. I wish I were kidding. Teachers would administer the same exam at the beginning and at the end of the school year. By means of value-added measurements and an obtuse formula, the teachers' effectiveness would be determined. In a hilarious note, my teachers were telling students point-blank that it would be wise to fail the exam in October and then marginally improve in the exam in June. Moreover, in New York, general state aid for schools is now tied to teacher evaluations, which puts further strain on the most impoverished communities in our state. Naturally, I, with the reputation of being a rabble-rouser, opted out of every SLO exam.
4
Each time, I put my name on the test booklet and Scantron and then handed the blank items back to my teacher. There were no consequences.

All over the state, there has been an outpouring of indignation at the APPR system. I cannot begin to describe some of the conversations I've had with educators, many of whom are veterans with decades of experience in this profession, who are feeling humiliated, demoralized, and beaten down by this process. Many would subscribe to Bob Seger's lyrics, “I feel like a number. I'm not a number. I'm not a number. Dammit I'm a man. I said I'm a man.”

Two principals, Sean Feeney of the Wheatley School and Carol Burris of South Side High School, took the lead and drafted a letter protesting the evaluation system. As of January 2013, 1,535 principals as well as 6,500 parents, educators, and students have signed onto the document. In addition, in one survey, an overwhelming majority of New York principals said that the test scores are “not a very accurate reflection of teacher ability.” Some have said it would be easier to flip a coin. An analysis by the
New York Times
of some teacher evaluation systems in the United States discovered that almost all of the teachers were rated effective: “In Florida, 97 percent of teachers were deemed effective or highly effective in the most recent evaluations. In Tennessee, 98 percent of teachers were judged to be ‘at expectations.' In Michigan, 98 percent of teachers were rated effective or better.”
5
So much for spending millions on junk science.

If there's one thing that is absolutely clear to me, it's that Governor Cuomo has ignored the voices of students, teachers, principals, and parents who have grave concerns about the evaluations. He is frankly telling millions of students and teachers that their value is no more than a number in a spreadsheet. What he's forgotten is that evaluation is best done when the purpose is not to punish and reward teachers but to lend them support, foster collaboration, and encourage self-evaluation.

What are some alternatives to testing? Many schools have introduced portfolios as a form of assessment. Students collect their best work—projects, blog posts, essays, videos, and podcasts—and present it in a professional manner to their teachers, peers, and the community at large. When they aren't trying to constantly “prove that learning happened,” it is done for its own sake via intrinsic motivation and curiosity. Much research has found that external rewards like grades and test scores are extremely deleterious to the learning process.

Fortunately, more companies are realizing that test scores and grades are fundamentally trivial in the assessment of potential employees. Google is one of the more famous ones. Laszlo Bock, senior vice president of people operations at Google, told the
New York Times
, “One of the things we've seen from all our data crunching is that G.P.A.'s are worthless as a criteria for hiring, and test scores are worthless.”
6
When hiring people for technology positions, candidates are often asked to send a link to their GitHub account or portfolio. Pathbrite, a startup based in San Francisco, allows people to showcase their work, learning, and achievements through digital portfolios.

In early April 2013, representatives from student unions and groups from around the country gathered in the basement of the St. Stephen Church in Columbia Heights in the nation's capital at the strike of midnight. Sitting cross-legged in a circle on the cool linoleum floor, we discussed our successes and hashed out a plan moving forward. All of us in our own right were rebels with a cause, dreaming the impossible dream, and hungry to spur a movement led by young people.

My peers, from Portland, Seattle, and Providence to Chicago, Newark, and Philadelphia, have been walking out of school, protesting, and rallying against high-stakes testing, budget cuts, and the corporate assault on public education. Whether it is for gay rights, voting rights, civil rights, women's rights, in every successful social movement it is young people taking charge, leading the way, and sparking outrage within us all. No longer are we willing to stay on the sidelines while our society, schools, and communities are being wrecked.

As I said at a rally in Albany, New York, in June 2013: revolutions begin in the basements of churches, in the backs of bars, in the rooms of community centers, and on Facebook and Twitter. It's time for our stakeholders to rise up and revolt. We will walk out. We will opt out of testing. We will boycott. We will protest. And we won't stop until our demands are met.

University of Massachusetts students rally to support Barbara Madeloni (wearing the “What would bell hooks do?” T-shirt) in the wake of her termination for supporting their stand against standardized testing. © 2012 by Rene Theberge

 

 

Sarah Chambers addresses the Saucedo elementary school community during the boycott of the Illinois Standards Achievement Test (ISAT) in March 2014.