HEATHER
MIGDON
Diary #7
"Will
This Be on the SAT-9?"
Unfortunately, most teachers who read this diary have students who will take standardized tests in the upcoming weeks. My students will take the Stanford-9 Achievement Test in the last week of April — immediately after spring break. Whether our students test very soon or we wait until June, testing fever destroys what would otherwise be joyous spring months.
While teachers and students everywhere are negatively affected by standardized testing, nowhere are the effects of testing more deleterious than in low-performing schools. The panic starts with central offices that threaten that another year of dismal test scores will result in the school being shut-down and reopened with a new faculty. Suddenly, as January becomes February, and the school administration gets even more desperate, they order that all assessments must be given in a multiple-choice format, complete with answer sheets that require children to bubble in responses. Teachers begin thinking that telling the students that a skill will be on the standardized test is sufficient engagement to precede a lesson. Students become apprehensive of any test, knowing that there isn't any reason to think they will come any closer to passing the standardized test this year than they did in the years before. I noted and then quickly ignored all of these factors until last week when I introduced my homeroom class to our new unit in social studies: Egypt. Taneka's hand shot up in the air, and before I could even recognize her by name, she blurted out, exasperated, "Will this be on the SAT-9?" When I replied that it would not be, she and several classmates became frustrated and demanded to know, if it would not be on the standardized test, why we were even learning about it. I've been critical of teachers who teach to the test, but I know why they do it. Children and teachers are judged based on the scores from those exams. When my children matriculate to junior high, the guidance counselors at their new schools will determine in which track they belong based on their scores. If my students perform poorly, I am branded a bad teacher. My colleagues and I could actually lose our jobs if our school has another bad year. But despite these pressures, I simply cannot spend hours every day practicing test taking skills. My students deserve interesting and authentic lessons, and I intend to provide them. So our Egyptian unit will go on, if only because the alternative is unbearably bleak.
