Way to Go I.S. 318
When your spouse goes through graduate school you begin to develop a vicarious understanding or interest in the particular course of study undertaken by that spouse. Since Allison is just a thesis away from completing her MA as a Literacy Specialist I have come to understand things about reading, coding, comprehension I never understood before. I also have come to intimately know how terrible No Child Left Behind has been for our schools and our children.
I have come to really comprehend how poor NCLB is because of what Allison has learned about education, policy, and how children learn. So my hat goes off to the 8th graders of I.S. 318 in the South Bronx who staged a peaceful protest against taking yet another three-hour meaningless practice test last week.
The entire 8th grade class handed in blank packets for a three-hour practice social studies test. As reported by Dan Brown in the Huffington Post, high-stakes testing is basically out of control. Teachers teach to the test and students are forced to learn what the test wants them to. Testing companies haul in millions of dollars under the auspices of accountability and there is nothing anyone can do about it. Until the students at a public school in the South Bronx took a stand.
"We've had a whole bunch of these diagnostic tests all year," Tatiana Nelson, 13, one of the protest leaders, said Tuesday outside the school. "They don't even count toward our grades. The school system's just treating us like test dummies for the companies that make the exams."Perhaps these students can help us see that using testing as the sole means of evaluating education, intelligence, or progress has become an unhealthy fixation.
According to the petition, they are sick and tired of the "constant, excessive and stressful testing" that causes them to "lose valuable instructional time with our teachers." - NY Daily News
6 comments:
AMEN
It really should be "No teacher left standing."
I taught in NYC for a few years and went to Manhattan Church of Christ and your young adult class a few times. Then I came back to Texas, and have been teaching high school science. I feel I have a lot of experience with NCLB, testing, and the way states are handling it. I do have a problem when teachers teach to the test. However, as a new mother, I want to know that my child and his teachers are being held accountable for learning at each age level. I could go on and on if you're interested, but basically, I am horrified that kids would show that much disrespect for an assignment given by their teacher. It's that kind of attitude from students that forced me to leave teaching in NYC. With my students, I have 80-90% passing rate on my science tests at grades 8, 10, and 11, and that includes special ed students. I teach the material and then give them testing hints. They are required to come to school every day (an idea lacking in many NYC schools, I had some students with 10% attendance that the principal graduated anyway) and they are required to listen to me (again, lacking in NYC schools - if it's not a threat to the teacher, the administration ignores "classroom management issues"). And I'm successful and the tests aren't that big a deal. Even if kids don't agree with the tests, they need to learn basic respect for the people who put in countless hours to try to help them. Practice tests are not a waste, they are there to help the teacher see what specific concepts each individual child needs help with. I spend hours going over data from practice tests to individualize my instruction. If you're really interested in hearing from a teacher's side, let me know.
Kelly (Coffey) Burleson
i sure wish i would've known how to show a little disrespect while getting the shaft in education...through college, btw.
--kelli
Kelly:
Thanks for the comment. You bring up a range of issues in your comments. It's true that the Dept. of Ed in NYC isn't a shining example of education to the rest of the nation. However in their defense educating 2 million children everyday many of whom are first or second generation immigrants is a challenge most cities and states don't even come close to dealing with.
A great many education experts have argued that NCLB has been a poor instrument of accountability, assessment of learning, and budgetary allocations (overview of NCLB problems). Take for example how NCLB punishes low-performing students. If a school is underperforming then the government takes away resources until they start to improve rather than increasing funding to address that problem area of learning. That's like stopping at each quarter of a football game and taking away one player from the team who is loosing and then expecting that team to at-least tie the team that has all their players and is already ahead in the score by the end of the game!
I completely disagree with your assessment of who these kids are. These students didn't disrespect their teachers. They made a peaceful protest against being tested for three hours on something that doesn't count. It's not like this was their only test they have taken all year. These students handed in blank papers and wrote out a list of grievances. Their main frustration being that these mean nothing test take time away from them actually being in the classroom learning something from their teachers.
I give you major kudos for teaching in a NYC school. That is a tough, tough gig under the best of circumstances.
Ditto, Jason. Kelly, I really don't see how these standardized tests truly make sure students and "teachers are being held accountable for learning at each age level." I think tests are useful tools that have been given way too much credit and power. I believe at this point they are doing more harm than good in our general education system.
Kate, all I can say is from my five years of teaching at the high school level, I do see some problems with the individual tests that are given, but I really don't have a problem with the idea in general. Yes, some kids are better test-takers than others, but these tests are not generally very hard, especially the ones required to graduate from high school, and I don't see a problem with making kids work to pass them to earn that diploma. There are lots of problems with our educational system, but most people seem to automatically want to blame the tests, when there are a lot bigger problems that should be focused on. That's my humble opinion as someone who's been there.
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