What has been happening in education for most of the last two decades?
Let me lay out a simplified version of the problem, a chart that shows a piece of recent history starting with No Child Left Behind (NCLB) in 2003:
Essentially, we threatened people from the top down. “Do it or else!” We’ve continued to threaten people since the inception of NCLB, having adopted test scores as THE measures of teacher competence. Yet improvements in test scores have generally been scant or even nonexistent. Here is just one example from https://www.detroitnews.com/story/news/education/2019/10/30/naep-detroit-students-improve-in-math-michigan-improves-ranking/2491631001/: “Michigan’s student scores also slightly improved in fourth-grade math and reading as well as in eighth-grade math but not in a statistically significant way. Scores in eighth-grade math declined by more than two points compared to 2017, however.”
Maybe it’s time to stop threatening people. When test scores are considered alone — without considering language barriers, special education status, socioeconomic considerations — like all those parents who CANNOT be home this year helping their kids with online education — without considering how valid, reliable and appropriate those tests are… well, it’s no wonder many teachers feel trapped. They are trapped. English language learners who cannot read the test will not pass the test. Special education students with significant reading disabilities will not pass the test. Homeless kids who have been switching from classroom to classroom throughout their lives are unlikely to pass the test.
Yet we threaten teachers when students cannot pass inappropriate tests. We put these teachers on remediation plans when they have nothing to remediate. We deny them tenure or take away their tenure because their school is adding greater numbers of homeless students.
“Everybody is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid.”
There’s some doubt as to whether the PRECEDING quotation comes from Albert Einstein, but whatever the source, it drips truth:
Testing hurts many kids, the kids gasping at the bottom of the tree. It hurts teachers who have to watch those gasping, lost kids. And it has been insidiously doing damage to education all across the United States as teachers finally decide they have had enough.
“The teacher shortage is real, large and growing, and worse than we thought: The first report in ‘The Perfect Storm in the Teacher Labor Market’ series. By Emma Garcia and Elaine Weiss, March 26, 2019.
Teachers are fleeing this profession. In social media they are regularly asking for advice on how best to do so. Blame gets old. Hard-working, dedicated, college graduates who are regularly attacked for factors outside their control cannot be expected to hang in indefinitely. When I put in the search “how do i get out of teaching” I get 1,100,000,000 results from Google.
The momentum of testing has been slowed by COVID-19. This is a perfect time for parents and teachers to try to put a stop to standardized-test-driven instruction. With luck, reader, your tests are shut down this year. Parents, if the tests are still scheduled, OPT OUT. Tell school and other leaders in your state that you do not plan to subject your child to this too often ego-battering experience. Teachers, raise the issue with people around you. You may be stuck administering that test this year, but 2020 and 2021 will be perfect times to point out the absurdity and toxicity of this set-up. Push the union to carry the torch high in a fight to reclaim instructional time and flexibility.
U.S. education been pointed at that test for nearly two decades now. What do we have to show for our efforts? Test scores are stagnant. Teachers are leaving. And here’s a sobering stat: “…between 2007 and 2012, anxiety disorders in children and teens went up 20%.” from https://www.healthychildren.org/English/health-issues/conditions/emotional-problems/Pages/Anxiety-Disorders.aspx , the American Academy of Pediatrics, 2019.
We are killing these kids, at least the ones who still care. We are driving others to tune out. Why play a game you feel you can never win? Detaching from school may be the best move available to some children. We are driving once excellent teachers toward real estate licenses and early retirement. NCLB is gone, but we have institutionalized a system in which the test determines the curriculum and books and materials that students use — whether those students are ready or not. That’s a perfect set-up for the creation of anxiety disorders — in students and the adults overseeing their classrooms. (Written by a retired teacher who quit a few years earlier than she intended after she lost over 20% of her last school year to required tests her bilingual students mostly could not even read.)
It’s time to shift our focus towards learning instead of test results.
P.S. Those ADHD diagnoses? See https://www.eduhonesty.com/seeing-what-we-want-to-see/