Demoralized

The past two weeks during my teaching practice, I have felt rather demoralized. Why? I have two words for you: TEST PREP.

Ugh... My juniors were prepping for the SAT, and my sophomores are prepping for the MCAS. Both of these exams, though they are quite different, are high-stakes standardized tests that can seriously change the future paths of my students. It's discouraging to watch them struggle and only sometimes succeed when I know they are extremely bright, talented individuals. It's frustrating to know that a low score on the MCAS could mean a student not receiving a high school diploma or a that a low score on the SAT could mean extremely limited college choices. And it's extraordinarily disheartening to watch my students in class put their heads down on their desks in dismay. I hardly have my usual energy and enthusiasm to keep encouraging them with "You can do it!"

I don't really understand how we got here, why it suddenly became so important to assess everyone's knowledge purely based on standardized test scores. From Bush's NCLB to Obama's Race to the Top, I simply can't understand the people making education policy anymore. Why are we firing so many teachers and closing so many schools? If we base teachers' pay on their students' scores, who will want to teach the low-scoring kids? When did we stop trusting teachers and start bribing them with salary increases? It seems there are so many backwards philosophies going on here, I don't even know which one to attack first.

As Deb Meier said, "Everytime I see the words "race to the top" it chills me. Who is racing where? What's at the finish line? A gold star?" I had the incredible opportunity to hear Deb Meier speak at Tufts University this year, and she was incredibly inspiring to me. I'll share a story with you that she shared with the audience that really hit home for me. (Of course this is totally paraphrased from my memory, so I apologize for the inaccuracies.)

When my son was in third grade or so, he took a multiple-choice test. He didn't score very well on it, so we were going through the questions together at home. We got to one question that he answered incorrectly, and I asked him to explain to me why he chose the answer he did. And he said, "Well, I knew they wanted me to choose answer B, but I thought D was better." I responded, "But you knew they wanted you to choose B!" And he said, "Yea, well, I wrote a little note here in the margins explaining why my answer was better." He was shocked to learn that no one had read his margin notes and that a computer had graded his exam. That's when I realized how easily standardized tests could produce false assessments.

I think Meier has a brilliant point here. The issue with standardized tests is that there's a false belief that they are indeed standard and unbiased. Everyone agrees that a B+ from Ms. Smith's classroom in California will probably not mean the same thing as a B+ from Mr. Jones' classroom in Connecticut, so we don't try and compare them. However, we then make the false assumption that a 600 on the math section of the SAT for one student in Wyoming means the same thing for a student from Chelsea. They are still not comparable due to the circumstances in which each student was raised and educated and due to the nature of the test. What people fail to realize is that all assessment still comes down to human judgment. Whether we are assessing students through tests and quizzes, essays and papers, or portfolios and projects, human beings will still subjectively assess student work. Hence my frustration with teaching to the MCAS or the SAT. My dear students are being poorly assessed through these tests that hold so much power over their futures! It kills me to see them so stressed and demoralized.

I discovered something interesting upon talking to another math teacher at our school. Over the past several years, they have improved significantly every year on their MCAS scores, but they have remained stagnant for quite some time with their SAT scores. Maybe this has something to do with the fact that the SAT is scored based on the national averages, though I'm not actually sure how the MCAS is scored. While I'm glad to see fewer of our students finding the MCAS as an obstacle to graduation, I'm still frustrated by the fact that urban areas all over the nation struggle with SAT scores. Why is it?!? It doesn't seem fair, and I never quite know what to tell my students. Most of my students are aiming for somewhere between 400-500 on each section, which is ghastly different from what my friends and I were aiming for when we were in high school. I only wish I knew how I could change that.

Well, at least my juniors are finished with the SAT for now... until they take it again in the fall. We still have one more week of MCAS prep for my sophomores. Here's to hoping for a better week!