Kids vs. Test

By Erica J. Ringelspaugh

I gave my freshman a quiz on the first day of school.

I gave a silly quiz, asking them to prove that they paid attention to the classroom tour, detailing where to turn assignments in, what papers they could throw away and what they had to keep, and how to find a pencil if they came to class without one. After I enforced silence for the three minutes it took them to circle the fairly obvious correct answers, we went through the quiz orally, and I declared that I assumed that they all earned a 100% on this quiz, so I didn’t need the quiz papers back, I’d just enter full credit in the grade book for each of them.

And then I asked them to go back to the quiz, and tell me why it was so easy. How did they learn the answers? Were there any trick questions? Look at the patterns of the answers. How long were the correct ones? What words cued them in? How many of the choices could they cross out right away?

* * *

On the first day of freshman year, I started prepping my students for the Wisconsin Knowledge and Concepts Examination (WKCE) they will take in the middle of their sophomore year.

On the first day of inservice, every employee of our district, including custodians and food service workers, scrunched into the high school cafeteria to review our districts’ falling test scores. Our superintendent showed PowerPoint slides with line graphs that looked like jagged ski hill slopes, and sternly warned us of the consequences of being a “failing school.”

On the second and third days of in-service, trained Dimensions of Learning instructors around the district taught us teaching strategies to promote life-long student learning, warned us that each child learns at his own time and pace, and admonished us not to teach to the limited skills and content covered on any standardized test.

On the fourth day of in-service, every teacher in my high school scrunched into the school library to review the WKCE scores in more detail, splitting into small groups to analyze individual sections of the test, to evaluate where our students were going wrong, discover any obvious patterns, literally poring over the test booklet and the answer booklet question by question.

We reported back to the large group, presenting our conclusions from sketchy notes written on torn-out pages of notebook paper in much the same way as our students do. We found that our students need help analyzing author’s purpose, that they have trouble with mathematic word problems, and that they need to review the scientific process. And then we started looking at each other. And suddenly blame started bouncing around the room.

“Not my fault,” I thought. “I wasn’t here to train last year’s sophomores.”

“I have so little time with them before the November test,” said Sally, the teacher who conducts many of the sophomore English classes, “and now, with block scheduling, some students won’t even have my class before they have to take the test."

“Last year, the students had so many tests in a row,” said a social studies teacher. “They had Measures of Academic Progress testing, and then two weeks later, they took the WKCE. I’m sure the test burn-out partly contributed to the lower scores.”

“And we’re in a poverty-stricken community. The population base is simply working against us.”

“Have we ever really communicated to them the stakes for us in this test?” asked another teacher, “Okay, it doesn’t really affect them personally. But do they understand how important this is for their school?”

Someone else muttered, “I think they just don’t care.”

After the meeting ended, I gathered my papers, and marched back to my classroom with the pink and white test booklet balanced on top of the stack folded into my arms. I have other goals for my classroom, I thought: to make my students feel safe and appreciated, to teach analytical and evaluative skills, to foster a love of reading and writing, and an understanding of the strategies to read and write well. The WKCE in my hands wasn’t measuring those things. I tossed the booklet onto my desk.

Later, I conferenced with our new English teacher, Gwen, on curriculum and strategies for her Freshman English classes, the same course I teach, and her British Literature classes, who were last year taught by my mentor, Carolyn. I pulled out detailed curriculum for the Freshmen English courses, including reserved tests, bullets of power standards, and lists of vocabulary words we were expected to teach the students during that year. We talked about strategies that worked well for the freshman. Then, I walked Gwen back to her classroom, and showed her the choices she had for her British Lit class, the rows of novels on the back wall, and the fading textbook that the last teacher had supplemented with modern plays, short stories, and even tabloids from England in order to teach not only the literature of the Isle, but the mentality and culture.

“So what standards do I need to cover in Brit Lit?” Gwen asked, “What vocab?”

I pointed to the three power standards we had identified for the variety of senior level literature choices. “There is no vocab list.” I said, “It’s up to you.”

“What primary texts do I use?”

“Carolyn tried to include a couple of novels each semester. I know she taught Beowulf and Chaucer. Otherwise, it’s up to you.”

“Strategies?”

“Up to you.”

Leaving Gwen in her room to get started, textbooks and lists spread around her, I sat down at my desk and picked up my own copies of the lists again. I would have had so much fun, I thought, teaching that British Literature class this year. I fantasized about the lessons I would create with the seniors that would be in my class, working together to discover culture, bringing in artifacts from when I lived there, allowing the students to choose some of their own texts. For a moment last year, I thought I’d be teaching creative writing this year. I was so excited to be able to teach what I loved doing most, helping those seniors master the content that they thought most appropriate to the careers they had chosen, teaching them to write effectively and well. I pulled myself back to reality: I love bouncing around with my freshmen, the discovery and the joy when they master a skill. And I love researching with my AP juniors, teaching them strategies for persuading and writing for audience. But there is more pressure to those classes: the test at the end that technically measures how advanced my students are, but always seems to feel like it’s measuring how good a teacher I am.

* * *

So I gave my freshman a quiz on the first day of school, their first quiz in a series of small pop quizzes in which I will attempt to teach test-taking skills and familiarize them with the format and structure of the WKCE that I have now hidden in a drawer. I will make it routine, so that they approach the test matter-of-factly, with confidence and awareness, not with panic, apathy or resentment. Their testing does not stop when they graduate from Adams-Friendship High School; testing itself is a skill they may have to use often – on the ACT, Compass, ASVAB, Driver’s Test, CNA, CCNA, ASC, or BAR.

But neither do I want their learning to stop. On the second day of school, I assigned my AP History juniors to read the second and third chapters of Hawthorne’s "The Scarlet Letter". On the third day of school, I dealt character cards to each student, and they spent the first 20 minutes of class constructing character charts with quotes from the text. Then, they found a classmate with a different character, and predicted how the two characters were connected in the rest of the book. Then, each student found a different classmate with the third main character, and predicted how those two characters were connected in the rest of the book. The whole exercise took the full hour and a half block. Just before the bell rang, Jerry, a prominent football player, announced to the class, “I’ve never thought that hard for one green worksheet before.”

Making predictions based on the first three chapters of a romantic era novel will not be covered on the AP History exam. Neither will working in cooperative groups, keeping a positive attitude, the value of eating breakfast consistently or the myriad of other daily lessons I teach my students. The AP exam and the WKCE don't test their emotional maturity, mental cartwheel dexterity, or even their writing proficiency; neither does it test my ability to teach those other valuable life skills. Still, I don’t want to just teach them how to test; I want to teach them how to think.

Today, a short month into the school year, Bryan broke The Effective Student Rule for my freshman classes by saying a put-down. When he looked at me, I silently pointed to the door, indicating he should let himself into the hallway for a time-out. He shook his head and refused to move. Instead, two of my other boys stood up in unison, grabbed Bryan’s desk, and carried him out to the hall, desk and all, returned to the room and kept writing, all without speaking.

While watching my students work in tandem to enforce the rules of their community, and then return to their own good behavior, I recognized that I can do both things: I have taught these students test-taking skills, and I have created a safe and cohesive environment. I have introduced them to the structure of the WKCE, and I have educated them in the strategies that effective students employ. I have begun to teach them how to interpret author’s purpose, and they are still my kids, bouncing around, teasing me and each other, working in groups and in pairs, and helping each other learn.

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Posted November 11, 2006