Continuing
the conversation on testing, with Marjorie Larner:

[Marjorie]
As I walk the hallways and observe in classrooms in schools across our country,
I wonder what we as a nation envision as an outcome for the students spending
their time learning how to take tests.  Often,
the generic test preparation instruction doesn’t lead to success on the test,
but schools are hedging bets by doing it anyway.  What are we preparing our students to be and
do?

[Teacher
in a Strange Land] I made a big pitch in the last blog about the usefulness of curriculum-linked
tests as one valid form of assessment--but deliberately training children how
to outsmart standard testing  protocols is,
to put it bluntly, despicable teaching.  

The
underlying message to kids, especially young kids taking their first
high-stakes tests? It doesn't matter what things you know for sure, or which
skills you can demonstrate. Instead, here are some tricks to help you pump up
your test numbers. Your teachers insist that your learning will help you as an
adult, but then they spend time on things you'll never experience in real life
(filling in bubbles, speed-writing to mystery prompts under a strict time
limit). Schools hold test-prep rallies,
and send home letters reminding mom to tuck you into bed early, and feed you a
hot breakfast on test day.  Because at
the moment, they care more about those numbers than about your strengths, your
anxieties--or the rest of your life.

[Marjorie]
 I wish we could reach clear consensus
about criteria for determining who is a "bad teacher," and what we
see as a "failed school," or “struggling student.”  Why can't we be honest about where we stand as
a nation in regard to every child’s learning?

[Teacher
in a Strange Land] I have spent the last month reading portfolios and watching
videotaped lessons from National Board Certification candidates--teachers who
take a professional risk and ask an outsider to watch them teach, then read
their rationales for teaching decisions and self-critiques. They
are requesting
comments and feedback. This takes a certain amount of courage, a willingness to
be challenged on ingrained practices and beliefs. I've watched lots of teachers
working in high-needs schools--districts where achievement data is dismal, and an
entire school might be considered "failing."

I've
seen lots of students struggling. What I haven't observed is bad teachers. I've
seen teachers who do not have success with every child, but keep trying new
strategies. I've watched teachers steer a lesson into different territory when an
opportunity presented itself, later admitting that their original learning goals
were not achieved, although useful knowledge was acquired. I've read analyses
of what teachers glean from student discussions, written responses,
problem-solving, projects linking skills and applied knowledge--and tests. But
I haven't seen a teacher who has missed the boat entirely--whose content knowledge
is shaky, who is blithely teaching away with no visible results, who cannot
identify weaknesses in her own teaching. I know bad teachers are out there--but
they aren't signing up for self-assessment. So maybe we need to develop better assessments of their work, beyond the inadequate means of matching them to their students' scores.

Teachers
pursuing board certification are certainly more ambitious and confident than the
norm (although fewer than half of them certify on their first try). But it
strikes me that measuring teachers' effectiveness by watching them teach to
state or district goals, then asking them to analyze choices they made to
advance learning, is more likely to improve teaching in the process of weeding
out bad teachers.  

We
need a national conversation on the goals we want teachers to pursue
relentlessly, our preferred choices. And we need new voices in that dialogue,
including the people who are most affected. What is a teacher's primary goal? 

[Marjorie,
optimistically] We are inching closer to finding a way to make our case that we
need a bigger vision of achievement and success than is possible to assess
through these standardized tests.

[Teacher
in a Strange Land, trying to adopt Marjorie's optimism]  We're lying to our students, when we tell them
that high scores are a critical mark of personal achievement. Raising test
scores is a small, unimaginative goal; it's also cheap and easily quantifiable.
Constructing standardized tests, interpreting and manipulating test data are
specialized skills--and we have now given the power of defining and measuring
important learning to people removed from our classrooms, who stand to make a
profit from our quest for more data.

I
want to believe in that expanded vision of success, too, Marjorie. My vision
includes deeper and more challenging applied content; free, year-round academic
enrichment activities for students across the range of abilities; a national
belief in learning as the tool for success (rather than credentials or scores);
and a clear commitment to providing more human resources for kids at the bottom
of the gap.