I want to share a personal anecdote about standardized testing and why it led
me to leave a 41-year teaching career.
Some years ago, I was teaching a first grade class completely in Spanish in the
immersion program at Adams Elementary in the West 7th area. It was hard, since
Spanish is not my first language and I was exhausted, sometimes even dozing for
very brief periods at red lights on my way home, but I loved teaching mostly
native English-speakers how to read and do math in a completely new language.
I believe I was a successful teacher.
One year, a new superintendent arrived from her assistant superintendent
"enforcer" job in Chicago and wanted us to test all children at the BEGINNING
of my new second-grade class. I objected that these children had never been
taught in English, that they had had all instruction (including library and gym
and music and computer classes) in Spanish, that English was just starting in
second grade and that they should give us a few months at least to bring the
kids up to speed in English. I complained to anyone who would listen, but was
overruled. I sighed, knowing that the best I could do was to provide support
and encouragement to those 7-year-olds while I was forced to administer a
completely inappropriate test.
The first afternoon of the ill-advised test, I looked to the back of my
classroom to see a test booklet fluttering through the air, hurled across the
room by a frustrated little girl who rarely caused any discipline problems
before, but was clearly quite frustrated by being asked to perform in a
language she had never used for school before. I had to send her to the
office, of course, so she wouldn't disturb the other children, but it bothered
me.
The next day while also administering the continuing test, I looked up to see a
girl crying quietly at her desk. I immediately went back to see if she was
hurt or ill. She looked up with tears flowing out of her eyes and told me that
she had just figured out that she didn't know how to read. Shocked, I
explained to her that her reading was actually quite advanced, maybe two years
above what anyone would expect, that she often took a book to recess with her
and read while walking around on the playground. The problem, I explained, was
that she had learned how to read in Spanish and that the test was in English.
I would teach her how to read in English, I promised, and she would be a
fantastic English reader as well by the end of the year.
That was all a very upsetting experience. I resolved to never torture children
that way again, so I applied for a license for teaching English language
learners, hoping to work with small groups of recently immigrated children, to
be a real teacher again, not just another test-giver. That strategy didn't
work for me, since that group is actually given the same inappropriate tests as
well as additional tests due to their special language learner situation. I
watched helplessly as I was forced to give even more tests, while some of those
children were so demoralized by the futile task that they often refused to even
open their test booklets. We as teachers were rapidly killing any latent
curiosity they might previously have had.
Trying another tack, I obtained a Minnesota kindergarten license and got a job
teaching a 4 to 6-year-old class with the Montessori method at the Crossroad
Elementary School in the Como neighborhood. For several years, this worked
well. No standardized tests for these young children. Quite a few readers
before reaching first grade. The very best principal (Celeste Carty) that I
encountered in my 41-year-career. A wonderful diversity of children in every
way, highly motivated colleagues, fairly reasonable class size. Until No Child
Left Behind. Those standardized tests began creeping down to inflict
themselves on my beautiful students. Rigid commercial programs were purchased
and required for test-preparation, with teachers punished for not reading from
their robotic scripts. We were being drowned in a tsunami of bean-counting,
ignoring all natural curiosity that children might bring with them, ignoring
differences in background or learning styles that they might have.
I loved teaching in St. Paul. Nearly all the teachers I met were very highly
motivated, asking only to be given a few tools to make a positive difference
for the children they taught, willing to work very hard for longs hours with no
great ambitions of wealth, asking only for enough money to meet their minimum
needs into old age. Most children I met were eager to learn, most of their
parents amazingly supportive. The support staff of secretaries, aides,
cafeteria workers and bus drivers were often absolute heroes. The
administrators were consistent in having the needs of children come absolutely
first, while almost always working with teachers as a team to accomplish our
shared goals. I mentioned particularly my last principal Celeste Carty because
she was particularly adept at sparing us as teachers from the most ridiculous
demands, but simply being honest about the realities of submitting to those we
couldn't escape.
Torturing children with excessive testing, however, was not a task I could
avoid as a teacher, nor could I continue to be participate in it. I began to
feel like a co-dependent whose charming spouse would become violent during
every binge-drinking episode. So I decided to take an early retirement rather
that continue to be a part of a process I came to view as evil.
In the years since then, I have sometimes regretted my decision, knowing that I
had several years of health and energy for teaching, that I could have perhaps
taught another score of children to read, to play with numbers, to begin to
explore a wider and wilder world of people, history, languages. I miss the
kids and sometimes have vivid literal dreams about teaching. But I could not
have continued harming them with this widget-producing, factory style version
of education.
In my entire career, I made less money over the course of those 41 years than a
pro football player makes in a single SuperBowl game, but I have no financial
regrets at all. My regret, rather, is that we are now demonstrating to our
wonderful and diverse children that we do not actually love them, that we do
not actually even notice them as we concentrating on privatizing what happens
to them and on funneling money away from them to the testing companies, the
ultimate Daddy Warbucks of education. Ideally our schools represent that vital
link between the entire past of human history to all the hopes and dreams we
have for our entire species. The sadness I feel is that we seem determined to
severe that precious link in favor of profiteering by a few and the ephemeral
gain for a tiny fraction of people.