Testing Brings Out the Rebel in Me

I cannot say it enough. I hate high-stakes testing. I hate what it does to teachers. I hate what it does to students. I hate what it does to the schedule. I hate the control it has over public schools in North Carolina. I am speaking specifically of the End-Of-Grade tests, better known as the EOGs.

Starting next week, every Tuesday the first two hours of school will be CE time - not Current Events, rather Curriculum Enhancement. We will each have a group of students for two hours each week that we will teach how to do well on the test. The rest of the day will consist of shortened classes.

At the end of each quarter, a full day is set aside for quarter assessments. Think of them as mini EOGs. Along with the quarter assessments, the 7^th grade students have four writing prompts during the year.  All well and good, but I am not allowed to score them until I complete a class on how to score them. The class is done through a moodle that takes 8-10 hours to complete. It does not matter that I have scored writing assessments at the state level in Maine. I will not be able to score and get an idea of my students writing.

Today the Social Studies teacher stated he will set aside one day a week to work on Reading, Math, or Science during his class time. The nation, in its infinite wisdom decided that Social Studies no longer needed to be tested, which means it is no longer a priority for our students. And we wonder why  our children do not understand or know how our government works…

In May, the EOG testing begins in full. It starts in early May because those students not passing need to be tutored for another month and so they can take it again. I am not sure how that works, but it is my understanding that teaching as I know it stops the end of April. After that I will be administering tests, doing remediation, and preparing waivers for the students who don’t pass. The majority of students in two of my classes consistently do not pass the EOG. It is possible that I will work magic with them this year, but not probable. I am getting ready to ask for waivers for many of my students.

In the meantime, the term EOG is used at least 498 times a day to the students. All that this does is excite the students who test well, while creating test anxiety and a sense of failure in the students who consistently do not pass. (I have started to tell them that I hate it, but I will teach them how to play the testing game.)

It all leaves me with a big question: How would students perform on these senseless tests if we did not take so much time ‘preparing them for the test’? What would happen if we taught them how to think instead? If we taught them how to solve problems beyond those found on the EOG? If we taught them how to show their thinking in a different way? If we valued each student as the type of learner they are rather than try to fit them all into the same category?

I hate the testing. I hate what it does to students. I love each and every one of my students. I believe in them. I know that regardless of what that EOG says about them in June, they will all learn something in my class. In the meantime, I will do what I do – have fun while teaching my students that they can succeed regardless of what some stupid test says.