Testing 1-2-3

"I didn't fail the test, I just found 100 ways to do it wrong." --Benjamin Franklin

Santino was in second grade and came home from school after a day of testing for the CSTs (California Standards Test).  These are the annual tests kids take to determine a school's compliance with No Child Left Behind.

"Mom, Dad--what's an almanac?"  I knew why he was asking that question, because as a second grade teacher, I had read that same question that day as I tested my kids at my school.

I looked at Santino's dad and decided to field the question.  "It's an informational book about a specific subject.  I used to have a baseball almanac that had statistics on baseball.  Or you can have the farmer's almanac, which gives information on the weather."

Santino harrumphed.  "Well, if you had to get information about stamp collecting, would you use a dictionary, thesaurus, encyclopedia, or an almanac?"

Simultaneously, Santino's dad and I gave different answers.  "Encyclopedia," said Dad.  "Almanac," said Mom.  Then my poor son waited patiently as his dad and I debated the question.  Dad said that all encyclopedias will have information on stamps, and almanacs are inferior because you have to get the right kind of almanac.  I countered that encyclopedias only have general information, so you would need a stamp almanac to get any useful information on stamp collecting.  He never faltered from encyclopedia; I never strayed from almanac.  We could not agree at all. We didn't even agree to disagree.

When two highly educated people disagree on a question posed to second-graders on a standardized test, it makes you wonder: what exactly are they testing?  How useful and valid are these tests?

I don't know what testing was like before No Child Left Behind.  I only know the tests I have been giving my students for the past seven years.

Anyone can download sample questions from the state's Department of Education website.  As a teacher, you need to know not only what topics are covered on the test, but also how they are covered.  For example, there are dozens of questions on the test about writing.  How can you assess writing on a multiple choice test?  One of their strategies is to have sample pieces of writing, and then have students select the best sentence or group of words to complete the writing piece.

I understand that assessing writing is a difficult standard to tackle, but let's be real--this isn't how we actually teach writing, or how we write, for that matter.  According to the California content standards, students must be able to brainstorm, draft, edit, and publish a piece of writing--we call that the writing process.  Literally, the fourth grade standard reads:  "Edit and revise selected drafts to improve coherence and progression by adding, deleting, consolidating, and rearranging text." Nowhere in the standards for, say, fourth grade does it say that students have to be able to select the best possible sentence out of a group of sentences. I suppose you can defend that this is part of the editing process, but that's not how we really edit--selecting "the best" sentence out of many similar sentences.  When I'm helping my kids with their revisions, I'm aiming for interesting, complex sentences that fit well in the writing piece and are grammatically correct.

As a writing instructor, I prefer the more organic approach.  Give the kids a topic, and let them brainstorm and write.  Certainly you review passages and talk about why one sentence would be better than another. But in order for them to perform well on the test, they must be able to do a very specific task:  choose the "best" in a group of "good" sentences.   This is harder than it sounds.  They have to practice this over and over again--and do it well.  You need to review with them in great detail--what makes this sentence better than that one?  On the test, sometimes they stop when they get to a "good" sentence but not the "best" sentence.  (And usually three out of the four choices are good.)  Often kids just pick the longest sentence in the group, and so you have to address that issue too. Longer is not necessarily better.  Forget about the fact that all year long, we've been teaching them to create depth (and consequently length) to their sentences by adding adjectives, adverbs, and dependent clauses.

You see, the questions on the test aren't designed to check that they merely understand and apply the concept. The questions are actually tricky and often very difficult.  For example, in that selection of sentences as answers, the test makers include a very short but descriptive sentence (the right answer) and a very long but awkward sentence (the wrong answer).  Good luck to you English learners who are speaking Spanish at home.

Oh--and don't get me going on mathematics testing for second graders.  The math test for second graders is given orally.   The teacher reads every question to the kids.  The questions aren't written in their test booklets--only the answers.  So, imagine that spacey--but smart--kid who wasn't quite listening as I read the question the first time, and the kid is still not listening the second time.  "I didn't hear the question," says the second grader.  "I'm sorry," I reply, "I can only read the question two times.  You have to listen and pay attention."  Or, what if they heard the question but need the visual cue to understand it?  They don't have the question written down to check their understanding.

The math test for second graders becomes a test in listening comprehension.  That's tricky for fidgety second graders and even trickier for kids learning English as a second language.  I make it very clear to my kids: this is a test of your listening comprehension.  I give my second graders practice oral tests in math just to get them used to hearing math questions without any visual reinforcement.

Also, the second graders don't benefit from that test-taking strategy of skipping the hard one and going back to it after your brain has had time to register the information.  There is no "going over your work" in the second grade math test.

I could blather on and on about the problems with the standardized tests we are giving our kids in California.  I've been told that earlier versions of the test were more reasonable and apparently did a better job of assessing learning.

It's hard to tell who or what the beast is in this situation.  Is it the test? The standards?  The requirements of No Child Left Behind that ALL students are proficient in all areas by the year 2014?  I agree--assessment is a necessary tool to inform instruction.  But how do you fix a broken tool?

Let me tell you what I want happening in my classroom.  I want my kids to learn how to be critical thinkers.  I want my kids to learn how to use reading as a source for information and learning about the world.  My kids are 21st century learners, and I want to enable them to use the resources necessary (technology) to learn the way they know best.  I want my kids to be able to communicate effectively.   I want my kids to enjoy being nerds, to explore their interests, to engage in critical thinking, to love to learn and love to read.   Of course--I'll teach the standards, but the standards are really only a framework for what's really important in education.

So what is the use of the test?  Essentially we're testing our kids in order to see how the school is doing.  We're supposed to use it to inform instruction, but instead it's being used to determine our funding, our ability to stay autonomous as a school, and rate our "effectiveness" as teachers.

What is this test, really?  A measure of how well a student performs on this test.