Why has testing spun so far out of control? The obvious reason until recently was the need to make NCLB targets to avoid government sanctions, but those targets created their own dynamics. Data-driven instruction and frequent testing have become norms. Teachers and administrators expect to hollow out regular instructional interruptions for testing throughout the school year.

In academically-struggling districts, scores may affect retention all the way up the line. When a teacher, principal, or even superintendent does not deliver improving test-score numbers, that person’s job may be taken away, given to the next person who promises to deliver better numbers. In this environment, testing cannot be deemphasized. I remember my Principal going from class to class one year to tell students he needed them to help him. He needed those scores to go up.

Multiple tests have another advantage; they provide multiple data sources to use to document progress. If MAP® test improvements show only mediocre progress, AIMSWEB® scores may come in documenting a greater leap forward. Test scores on one test may have gone up 6% in the last year, while scores on another test fell 1%. That 6% improvement likely will be included in the district newsletter, while the 1% loss quietly disappears into a filing cabinet in a dusty, interior office.

During my last year teaching, we gave multiple administrations of both AIMSWEB® and MAP®. I remember listening to my principal (another principal, not the guy who was going to all those classes) explain that she had chosen to give two tests because she wanted the better of the two to use for data to emphasize for Illinois State Board of Education representatives, who were dropping into our school regularly. I like to say we were not “on the radar.” By that point, we had been shot down. The local Board had been fired and state oversight included even classroom visits.

In my last year teaching, my district took two benchmark tests, each with three separate test dates for a total of six tests. In addition, students took PARCC® tests twice. (PARCC® would subsequently get rid of that second test, in response to negative feedback.) The test tally should also include mandatory unit tests written by an East Coast consulting firm, along with weekly Friday quizzes based on those unit tests. On the one hand, I would certainly be giving math quizzes and tests regardless; on the other hand, these multiple choice/short answer unit tests were written by outsiders, and their grades were calculated and used for data by academic coaches. The unit test results were not included in student grades. Quizzes were based on unit tests, not student learning levels.

All these assessments were administered throughout the school year to give the state, district leaders, school administrators and teachers feedback on how students were progressing toward meeting academic expectations. With these lost days of testing, my school was able to provide quick information to the state showing that students were making academic progress. I don’t actually remember the numbers we produced, but the school successfully reached improvement targets, at the expense of a fair amount of instructional time.

“Extra” tests may allow America’s district and school administrators to sanitize educational failures that don’t fit the desired picture. Politicians benefit from testing as well, receiving data that can be used to demonstrate a need for greater educational funding for their constituents and/or progress being made within their districts. At worst, politicians pass clumsy legislation meant to improve school performance, legislation that makes teaching and learning harder, rather than easier. No Child Left Behind instituted or at least accelerated the testing push that sucked up one-fifth of my teaching hours in my last year’s math classes.

In the end, whether we received useful data or not, I am certain that we did not receive data worth one-fifth of my teaching time. If we want to improve our schools, we urgently need to rein in testing. One-fifth of a school year amounts to 36 days — or thirty-six wasted classes for any single class group. I want at least 18 of those days back to use for teaching instead of giving absurd tests and quizzes.

I knew in advance that giving this unit test to the kid who wrote the above was a waste of time. I would have had to chug gallons of the Board Office Kool-Aid to think otherwise. But administrators had make it crystal clear that my job depended on me doing as told.

During the year of the tests, I worked furiously on math, but I also worked furiously on resiliency. I encouraged. I encouraged, encouraged, encouraged. I was the poster girl and motivational speaker for

When a teacher is teaching appropriate material, though, she should not need to keep picking her students up off the psychic floor. We owe our students tests they can understand based on material they have been  taught, material that has been sufficiently reinforced before test or quiz day. Every student should be able to do well on a test or quiz providing that student has listened, worked and studied.

I found this at a site that must be considered biased against the tests related to the Common Core. Given that I am also biased against those tests, though, I thought I would blog the following from https://coalitiontoprotectourpublicschools.org/latest-news/states-leave-common-core-sbac-and-parcc-tests-like-rats-deserting-a-sinking-ship. I love that URL, actually.

Below is a table summarizing all of these changes for States N through Z.

I look at this and wonder if I should have held on to teaching, stayed in the game awaiting a return to sanity. But we are talking about years of peoples lives here. In particular, my middle school bilingual students were absolutely hammered by PARCC® and the unit tests taken from Common Core standards, tests that were attempting to anticipate PARCC®. Let me offer another sample of a unit test given to one of those students:

While there is nothing wrong with the above test itself, giving this test to the student who provided those answers was absurd. I am reminded of a line from a song, “When all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.” These tests look like academic coffin nails to me. The kids answering those tests ended the year having failed test after test after test. They could never win. Neither could I.

To readers who are asking why I went along with this teaching and testing scheme: Every time I turned around, one of the school’s academic coaches, or the Assistant Principal, or the Principal or even a flock of visitors from the Board Office or the State Department of Education was walking into my classroom. Every time I had strayed from the program, I heard about it. In fact, I was verbally abused at times for my perceived flaws, which mostly consisted of not being with the program. A couple of times, I was absolutely excoriated. I spent one October week-end so shaken that I never fully recovered. I carried a resignation letter in my glove box for months. At best, I got a “I liked how you did this but why did you do that?” I could never win. By the end, I didn’t have the stamina to take the attacks that came with stepping off the Everyone Has to Take the Exact Same Unit Tests and Quizzes Bus.

Unit tests. Written by a now-bankrupt East Coast consulting firm. I’ve written a bit of this previously, but I am trying to put that last year in perspective now, for myself and for its victims — my students.

These mandatory tests were expected to be given to all seventh grade students at the same time, whether they were in special education, bilingual classes or regular classes. Academic coaches graded the multiple choice portions. I got to grade the short answers. I was never able to give a single student full points on any of these questions. I rarely managed to give a “+1” partial credit. To my knowledge, no student of mine ever passed a unit test. Bilingual students all went down in flames on these tests. So did special education students. So did a significant number of regular education students. A number of regular education students passed these tests, but that did not help my students.

Every Friday we had to give quizzes designed to get students ready for unit tests. Special education and bilingual education sometimes fudged and moved the test to Monday or Tuesday, but we were all supposed to be in lockstep. We had to be doing the same thing because the whole course of the year had been preplanned. The quizzes were put together by the math team but they did not help me with my problem. The quizzes were adapted from future unit tests. Both of my classes had come into the year at a 3rd level according to MAP; The fact of being years behind those unit tests was also complicated by inability on the part of some students to read the test.

The wackiest part came when the special education teacher and I created extra tests and quizzes to add to the weekly quizzes, occasional unit tests, three MAP tests, three AIMSWEB tests, and PARCC test. We had to create those extra quizzes since we were required to base 100% of students’ grades on tests and quizzes. A 2% override was allowed; if students got to 78% we could bump them to a “B” for example. But our students only chance of passing required the creation of these extra tests and quizzes we could use to improve their overall average, since they were almost always failing their Common-Core based tests and quizzes. Students could also retake quizzes, although not unit tests. I can’t count how many retakes and even retakes of retakes I gave. I gave many of them on Saturday mornings at special emergency tutoring sessions at McDonalds.

Should my students have been able to do the math in the tests above? Yes, they ought to have been ready for that math. But they were far from ready and I knew that from week one. I knew that from benchmark tests at the beginning of the year. I’d been in this situation for years and I’d been action-researching solutions for years. I’d found that remediation had to accompany attempts to master the current curriculum. Starting with necessary remediation put us too far behind; there were too many holes to fill in and we arrived at grade level much too late.

But those unit tests were the perfect example of “You can’t get there from here.”

Those particular mountains were too high for those students who could not add double-digit numbers. They were too high for students who could not add fractions. They were too high for students who did not understand percentages. Now, I could have taught my students to answer the above questions. But I could not do it in less than four days. The timetable was killing us. Fridays were shot due to quiz review and quizzes. Mondays might involve quiz review, although some days the time situation became so desperate we blasted through that review. We even missed reviews. I agree with a professional development speaker I once had: Shame on teachers who do not go over test and quiz results. That review tends to be one of our best teaching opportunities. But the train kept moving and some days I’d realize that I only had two and one-half classes to teach something like two-step equations, and I’d lose at least half a class if I reviewed Friday’s quiz. In desperation, I’d jettison the review.

I was required to split my class into groups daily to do group work. That sucked up extra time. Groups are fine but groups cost time, too, even after kids learn to manage the routine. I was supposed to be teaching vocabulary, too; I’d be a ridiculous bilingual teacher if I did not. Time slipped away.

I could have showed my students how to answer that pizza probability problem. I did show them. But they did not get the practice and repetition they needed to understand the pizza problem. And the quiz was on Friday and I was stuck. I could hold out until Monday for that quiz if I thought one or two more days might actually help, but every time I held out, I fell further behind, as regular classes marched forward at the pace I was supposed to be setting.

Eduhonesty:

My strongest students learned a great deal of math. I’d call that an argument for math placement based on previously identified math skills, though, not any endorsement of the Common Core-based, top-down curriculum approach that led to the above tests. Those tests are ludicrous. Every single one of those unit tests was ludicrous.

At the start of the year, I predicted my highest students would benefit, some kids in the middle might benefit and the kids at the bottom would be clobbered. I came close to calling the race, too. A few kids at the top made notable progress, more than they would have made with a less demanding curriculum. (I do want to try to be fair and objective about the testing regime.) As measured by quizzes and unit tests, a few kids in the middle who came for Saturday tutoring regularly also made progress. But those kids at the bottom crashed and burned. Students in the middle who did not get additional tutoring — some kids could not stay and did not have transportation, some kids would not stay — also went down in flames. Every week we were supposed to show color-coded quiz results for team review. Most of the time, only quiz retakes kept my spreadsheet from being a red sea of failures.

Tomorrow, I’ll try to post a few more tests, and add more to my story.

(Readers, please pass this on. I have not told such an explicit truth in awhile.)

By high school, the attractive, Hispanic boy who wrote School Principal #4 had become a struggle, a source of frequent disciplinary infractions. I’d be surprised to find out he graduated. This quick opening paragraph he wrote in middle school explains his high school hostility when we read between the lines.

When I become school principal, I want to change the school so it can improve and become a better school to learn in. And when I become principal I can make the school fun and cool. And I think the kids should learn and studied. that’s why when I become the principal the class periods are not going that long and all the classes are going to be easy. And the kids can enjoy themselves in class. Sometimes if I was the principal of the school I would let the students have free time after. If I become school principal I would have a McDonald’s in the school.

I see much more in this letter than a bilingual student with slightly fractured English. That “free time after” probably refers to open gym, to allowing kids to use the facilities after hours for fun, social events. Having taught this boy in both middle school and high school later, I find this letter extremely sad.

In middle school, my student still wanted to learn. He wanted to improve the school. At first appearance, he may seem unmotivated with his desire for shorter, easy classes. I know that’s not true.

He did not want an easy ride as much as he wanted a comprehensible, useful school day. By the time this boy hit middle school, No Child Left Behind penalties were in full play. The curriculum was being set to match the expected state test. That curriculum did not match my student’s learning levels. He was always lost. Many students in the school were lost and they only became further lost as the bar kept being raised higher. He came in for tutoring sometimes, but I watched him giving up. Bit by bit, he decided he did not have what it took to succeed academically.

I am angry for this boy. I am angry for his peers. I am angry at those upper-middle class, boneheaded bumblers in the district board office who demanded that I use common lesson plans that did not match my student’s learning levels. I am angry about the mandatory tests that no one could read. I am angrier about the textbook that the Assistant Superintendent picked over the recommendations of his committee of math teachers, who had recommended a more accessible book. “This book has the rigor we need,” he said. That translated to page after page of unreadable story problems set at a mathematical level four years above the average entering level of my students according to MAP tests.

An unreadable book might as well be no book. We could have used that book money much better. Hell, buying bushels of erasable markers would have used that money better.

Eduhonesty: I’m coming out of my fog here and it’s a little scary. My last year, I shut down since nothing I said ever seemed to make any difference and, more often than not, my protests created trouble for me. “No Excuses!” that featherbrain of an Assistant Principal would say when I pointed out that my students could not do common lesson plan openers that involved mathematical processes they had never learned — not until I taught the missing processes. “No excuses!” he would say when a student whose English was at a first grade level could not explain to him the seventh grade mathematical processes I was supposed to be teaching her. I think I had an alright relationship with the Assistant Superintendent until he insisted I should be using more of the resources provided me and I pointed out that my students could not read most of those resources, a fact which obliged me to create or find alternative materials. “We need more rigor,” he said. Well, yes, but only so many students can leap four years of missing instruction in a single bound. A few can. A few, with lots of extra tutoring, did. I taught furiously, helping them to make those leaps.

But the student who wrote the above paragraph?  We buried the kids like him with our rigor and our unreadable books. No wonder the district high school continues to be a drop-out factory. Another Superintendent is leaving. They all leave, at a rate of almost one a year. I hear the Assistant Superintendent is expected to take over.

Oh, God. Those poor kids. At least in our financially- and academically-disadvantaged districts, I believe rigor may be the death of American education.

My main concern with PARCC and the Common Core can be seen in the grim faces of students on PARCC days. Students walk the halls without smiles. Sometimes they stop to ask the effect of a poor score on their educational future. I have reassured middle school students that “flunking” the PARCC test will not result in being retained in the seventh grade.* I have reassured them that this test will not affect their ability to get into college. PARCC and the Common Core are adding to the long list of failures that extreme testing now regularly inflicts on students.

Those kids at the very bottom are not much worse off than before the Core and PARCC. If a student did not know most of the answers to the Illinois State Achievement Test, the impact of not knowing most PARCC answers will feel about the same. The world has not changed greatly for our lowest students.

The world has shifted under the kids in the middle and toward the top, however, the great majority of America’s students. Those kids in the middle may have gone from knowing many answers to knowing relatively few answers. Instead of walking out thinking they probably did alright., many kids in the middle now leave the testing arena with a sense of having been beaten up or even clobbered. The kids toward the top may end up feeling the same, if not quite as intensely, as they take a test with a greater percentage of unknown answers. Kids are breaking into tears during and after these tests. Kids are going sleepless the night before the test.

Most of our test-takers can be found somewhere in the middle of the testing bell curve, where the psychological costs from PARCC testing will be highest. Educational publications wrote about widespread expectations that test scores would fall throughout the country as students adapted to the new, harder standards, and the first PARCC test led to a fall in performance that was almost a freefall in some schools. No one in education seemed surprised.

Given that we were never able to meet demanded test improvements under NCLB, despite a decade of progressively harsher threats codified into a punitive law, the brainstorm that led government leaders and other Core proponents to believe America needed tougher standards and tougher tests seems utterly batshit crazy to me. Raising the bar when kids can’t jump the current bar strikes me as a strategy absolutely destined for failure. Believing that raising the bar will solve our performance problems is nothing more than a leap of faith. Believing in vampires or zombies would not require a much bigger leap of faith.

The standards have never been the problem. Any kid who had mastered the state standards for his or her state would have been ready for college. Performance is the problem. Kids have not been mastering the standards. Changing the standards will not change that fact.

*Administrations do not always understand how little their students understand about testing. Students catch the stench of anxiety from teachers and administrators, but they do not necessarily understand the source of that anxiety. The fact that a teacher or Principal’s job may rest on score results often will not be understood. Oddly enough, students tend to assume that the annual test is about THEM, rather than the adults in their lives.

I met two former colleagues for lunch. An old friend who taught special education in my middle school told me the story of her granddaughter who had cried after her first MAP^TM test, convinced she must have done badly because she did not understand her scores. Where was the 100%? Where was the smiley face? Her grandma showed her how the scores worked and they discovered she had scored four years above her grade.

What happens to the child who does not have a grandma who knows how to look up MAP^TM score grade equivalencies? I hope districts are explaining how these scores work. I am afraid this may not be the case, however.

Later I talked to a thirty-some-year old man in a kitchen and bath store who has a third-grade daughter. The conversation started with soccer, France’s win over Germany, Messi’s tax troubles and then moved into sports figures as role models. Teachers should be our role models, he said, not sports figures. I told him I was a teacher. The man had a degree in history, although he’d chosen sales over education. We talked about Michael Jordan’s gambling and the fact that even many decent sports figures led far from heroic lives. I discussed the problem of students whose dreams involved the NBA or the NFL without any back-up plans or understanding of the odds against them.

He brought up MAP^TM tests without my having raised the subject.

“What is this MAP^TM test?” he asked. “I never had to take this MAP^TM test. And they take it three times a year. Last time, my daughter, she did not sleep a wink.”

I explained the test and why that test can be useful. I like the fact that MAP^TM tests are adaptive, becoming harder as students answer questions correctly. Results are available almost immediately. Sections are broken down, too, so that I can see a student is struggling with geometry but comfortable in algebra. Personally, I’d like to substitute MAP^TM tests for that annual spring state test. For one thing, I get a great deal more useful information from MAP^TM tests than I have ever gotten from the big annual test. Those annual test results don’t always even come in before the end of the year. Last year’s PARCC test results did not arrive until well into the fall.

But that makes two scared little girls in one afternoon of conversations, both excellent students, one so anxious she did not sleep at all before the night of one of her three MAP^TM tests, one who broke down weeping because she did not understand her results.

I often emphasize in this blog the cost to students who repeatedly fail all these tests we keep giving. Today, I thought I’d speak up for the many frightened students who “pass” the tests, whose scores indicate they are at grade level or above. Eight-year-old girls should not be suffering from test anxiety. They should not be up all night for fear of tomorrow’s exam.

“Data-driven instruction” has a great deal to answer for. What can be the possible point of scaring little girls like this? What are we gaining in return for the emotional distress we are causing? A few more measurements? At what cost?

It’s past time to slay the Test Dragon. The city’s already in ruins while we make little girls want to hide under their beds. This rampant testing has to stop.

“I will be the best principal the school ever had. I will take the time-out room away and instead put in recess. And I will give no detentions and give free time instead. I will make the gym time longer and longer passing periods. And I will let them use electronics in school. And I will make school time shorter and sell the food and drinks that they sell in school for less.”

Eduhonesty: If I had given this boy a little longer to brainstorm, I bet we would have been having classes at Six Flags Amusement Park. He was a likable kid, but getting work out of him took a nonstop, concerted effort. What me, work?

In this time of the Danielson Rubric for grading teachers, kids like this can be nightmares. When my assessment is affected by “Mannie’s” work and classroom attentiveness, my only hope is to explain the process to Mannie and essentially beg for mercy. If the principal comes in, give me your absolute, best effort, I might say. The Mannies of the world tend to be nice kids and usually rise to the occasion. They may even raise their hands and add well-thought-out additions to classroom discussion when the principal walks in. Otherwise, those comments come only when the topic happens to be of interest to them.

And, most of the time, forget about homework, unless mom or dad are sitting right on top of Manny. Homework interferes with videogames. Homework interferes with soccer. Organized sports can be wins with kids like this, because of the need to maintain a certain average to stay on the team.

Sigh. Mannie’s plan has a few strengths, I guess. Maybe I could spend most my day supervising recess under his scheme. I always love supervising recess.

The illustration above is part of a behavior-modification plan for a seventh grader.

I borrowed this Dear Abby letter from http://lubbockonline.com/filed-online/2016-07-03/dear-abby-friends-admit-living-it-isnt-all-its-cracked-be#.V3psI6x_xxI. The Lubbock Avalanche-Journal makes a good first impression.

Dear Abby: My wife and I have a good marriage and two well-behaved kids who are good students and active in our community. Our 8-year-old son is very much the rule follower in school and outside activities, but cheats when playing board or card games with me or his sister at home.

When I catch him doing it, I end the game and tell him I won’t play with him if he’s going to cheat. My wife believes the cheating is “just for fun” and that I’m being too hard on him. I say the lesson I’m teaching him is that cheating is wrong.

We agree we are fortunate this happens only at home, but I’m concerned that if it is left unchecked, it will be regarded as permissible and it will escalate to become a problem in other circumstances. What do you think? Should I let up? — Virginia Dad

Dear Dad: No, stick to your guns. And the next time you catch your son cheating, impress upon him that if others catch him at it, they not only won’t want to play games with him, but also may not want to be friends with him.

Eduhonesty: Abby’s answer may be alright as far as it goes, but I’d say she does not go far enough. How does dad know this boy is not cheating in school? Cheating has become endemic in American education. The news is peppered with reports of district and school administrators cheating right now, let alone students. Still, dad may be right. Cheating may only be a problem at home — so far.

Dad is coming up on a problem that he may not realize will be part of the bigger cheating picture for his boy, however, a problem that Abby missed. Right now, his boy appears to be on track. Early elementary school students make teaching so easy in some ways.

“Ms. Q, Robbie is sitting in Mayra’s spot!”

“Ms. Q, Mayra is touching the stapler! That’s against the rules!”

“Ms. Q, Robbie looked is looking in the book! You said not to!”

But somewhere in the middle of elementary school, those innocent reports about Robbie’s and Mayra’s misbehavior fade away, as social codes shift. Kindergartners are natural snitches, but over time they learn better. They come to appreciate how much easier their social life becomes when they keep silent.

Snitching can be social suicide and any socially adept eight year old will figure that out. Even kids who dislike the idea of cheating often cease to speak up. The cost outweighs the benefit, with risks as large as getting ostracized or beat up on the playground. While the no-snitching code may be stronger in some cultures than others, that code has become regrettably standard today.

This boy is eight-years old. The transition occurs around eight years of age, give or take a year of two. Yes, kids may not play with this boy if he cheats at games, but cheating at his schoolwork won’t necessarily be a huge social black mark against him. He may even influence others to cheat as they see the short-term effect on his grades, and in the event his son gets caught cheating, not much is likely to happen. We lecture, we explain, and we sometimes even send students to the Principal’s office. Certain kids find these scoldings so intimidating that they think twice before cheating in the future. But other kids slough off our words. Teacher’s and administrator’s recriminations slip off them like water off the proverbial duck’s back.

Dad in the above letter needs to be hammering home the anti-cheating topic and I would say that eight is not too young to spend time on the long-term consequences of cheating. I’d start with, “O.K., you cheated and you won. How do you feel about that win? Were you really the best player? Would anybody who found out you had to cheat to win think you were the best player? Do you think people will respect you if they believe you have to cheat to win? Will you respect yourself?”

(This had to be Friday, when students could wear jeans sometimes provided they wore a school spirit t-shirt. Monday through Thursday were regular uniform days.)

Excerpt from a student paper from a few years in the past:

When I become principal of the school I would make some changes. The first thing I would change is the uniform because many of the students don’t like wearing uniforms. You may wonder why I would change uniform in the first part. Well I will change uniform first because no one wants to be in black and white or red and black or navy blue. Kids want to be cool and be famous like those famous people out there they want to be like Triple H, Akon, Shawn Michaels, John Cena, Lil Wayne. The second thing I would like to change is school hours because people are tired of the hours it’s too much work for them. I will like to make less hours of school for students.

More memories. My student went on to improve lunch, the last thing she believed needed changing. A delightful student, this girl had come from Africa and was pretty much on her own in the sense that her parents had almost no English so she conducted the practical matters of life for her family. She was picking up English quickly and had adapted to her new life. She had a beautiful smile.

P.S. Kids always seem to dislike their uniforms. One factor sometimes missed by outsiders: Uniforms are seldom worn in financially and academically-stronger areas, and then almost exclusively in private schools, with some exceptions such as financially stable, urban areas with gang activity. Students in the average middle-class school get to choose what they wear to school within sets of limits such as “no spaghetti straps” and no “vulgar t-shirts.” Uniforms themselves can make older children in financially-disadvantaged areas feel poor, even if part of the idea behind those uniforms may be to hide financial differences between families. My students used to go on field trips to museums and other venues, where students from other areas appeared in the latest fashions from the mall. They felt their uniforms set them apart.

The other big reason for instituting uniforms stems from gang activity. If everyone is wearing the same colors, students cannot use colors to represent their gangs.