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.