When Amy Holland began teaching in 1969, there was only one test
her students were required to take
– the California Test of Basic Skills. Today, her second-graders
at Gabilan Hills spend four days a year taking a slew of tests,
assessing their reading, writing and math skills.
Hollister – When Amy Holland began teaching in 1969, there was only one test her students were required to take – the California Test of Basic Skills. Today, her second-graders at Gabilan Hills spend four days a year taking a slew of tests, assessing their reading, writing and math skills.
In every classroom, in every district and county across the U.S., teachers are now spending more time administering tests required under state and federal guidelines than ever before. If they don’t do well, they risk losing funding and eventually being taken over by the state. That’s the reality of
education in an era of No Child Left Behind, a federal provision passed in 2001 to make sure no student graduated school without acquiring a certain level of skills deemed necessary to succeed beyond the classroom.
The new tests are an alphabet soup of acronyms from the CST or California Standards Test to the CAPA or California Alternate Performance Assessment. Kids learning English for the first time take the California English Language Development Test or CELDT while recently arrived Spanish-speakers are required to take the SABE or Spanish Assessment in Basic Education. Since 2002, there is also the California High School Exit Exam or CAHSEE, which all high-schoolers must pass in order to graduate.
But local teachers say the testing is excessive and can easily be synthesized into one exam that evaluates all aspects of student ability.
“It’s unfortunate that they can’t give just one test and with that test we can decide if you’re going to graduate from high school, if you should get honors and if you are proficient,” said Debbie Fisher, chair of the math department at San Benito High School.
Fisher said she doesn’t spend more time teaching to the test as a result of the new requirements, but her teaching approach has changed. She now prepares tests that have more multiple choice questions and teaches kids test-taking techniques to make their lives easier when the standardized exams roll around.
Teachers feel the heat on tests because school performance is directly tied to individual scores. Enough poor scores on a standardized test mean that the school doesn’t make the Annual Yearly Progress or AYP, another creation of the No Child Left Behind. Two consecutive years of not making gains on the AYP and the school becomes a program improvement school, meaning it gets intervention from the district and the county office of education. If the school does not improve its scores, it can eventually be taken over by the state, have its staff replaced and internal structure completely revamped. San Benito High School, for example, has already gotten a letter saying it could become a program improvement school if it does not improve its scores this year.
“There is quite a bit of pressure and it makes your job harder,” said Amy Holland, the Gabilan Hills teacher. “There is a lot of pressure to get kids to the standards but there is a lot more to it because not every child comes in at the same ability level.”
Parents can help teachers prepare kids for tests by taking more responsibility when it comes to their kids’ educations, said Fisher. It could be as simple as getting parents to understand the importance of tests and making sure students are rested and fed well on the day of the test, she said. Others say vouchers, which would give parents a choice of which school to send their kids, are the way to combat the problem.
“Standardized testing inevitably encourages a one-size-fits-all approach to education,” said Marie Gryphon, an analyst at Washington, D.C’s Cato Institute. “School choice reforms, which empower parents with vouchers or charter school alternatives, can promote student achievement by making teachers and schools responsible for the success of each student on an individual basis.”
Adding to the pressure of tests is the merit-based pay proposed by Gov. Schwarzenegger, which would align teacher salary increases with scores on the multitude of standardized tests. The state legislature is expected to vote on it this week.
Educators and others have criticized No Child Left Behind since it was implemented in 2001 and many are proposing a revamping of the system that would more accurately portray what is going in classrooms. But nothing can be done without the blessing of the federal Department of Education because schools throughout the country rely on it for funding.
“It would be great to get some of our best teachers and principals together to come up with what they think is a reasonable measure of what a good school is,” said Randoll Phelps, board trustee for the Hollister School District.
Phelps called the current system deeply flawed in that it defines schools as either successful or not based on one set of measurements.
“Kids aren’t widgets who are just shoved through a training regimen and then come out the other side considered educated,” said Phelps. “They are a lot more complicated entities than just a test score.”
Karina Ioffee covers education and agriculture for the Free Lance. Reach her at (831)637-5566 ext. 335 or [email protected]
