I’ll keep hammering on one particular nail in hopes that I am not hammering it into a coffin: Sensitive children may believe that low standardized test scores reflect how capable they are in general. When a child receives a low score on a test that his or her teacher called “important,” that child begins to try to figure out what that score means. By middle school, many kids think they know the answer. I ask them where a test or quiz went wrong and they answer:

“I’m just dumb, Ms. Turner.”

Suddenly, a minor glitch in math learning has become a car wreck in motion in front of me. By the time I start damage control, though, my student may already be bent or even broken. How many years was “Alex” rolling over in the ditch carrying that toxic self-view before I stumbled onto it?

I am not saying students should never receive low scores. If you don’t know a mathematical concept, you should not pass the quiz or test. What I am saying is that high-stakes testing can do long-term damage — a fact teachers know and more educational reformers need to understand.

This test, test, testing? It’s vital to keep in mind that some students will take a poor grade and decide to work harder. Others will give up. I am convinced that “failing” state tests year after year makes some students exit the academic arena, a place where they cannot effectively compete. While we must have unfamiliar material on standardized tests, we are long past due at deemphasizing those tests. Teachers explain that we do not expect students to be able to answer everything on the test and that we only want to learn what they know so that we can figure out exactly what to teach them. BUT ALWAYS COMING IN ON THE BOTTOM OF TEST DISTRIBUTIONS — A POSITION NICELY LAID OUT IN MANY BAR GRAPHS OF RESULTS — TAKES ON A MEANING OF ITS OWN, NO MATTER WHAT THE TEACHER SAYS.

“I’m just dumb, Ms. Turner.”

Kids don’t enter school thinking about themselves this way. They learn this view. High-stakes testing teaches this view — despite all our attempts at deemphasizing test results and creating positive self-images.

P.S. And frankly, if a test cannot tell us what our students need to be taught, we need to scrap the test. A state test that does not come in until after the school year ends is an abominable waste of time.