education

•CHAPTER 11

WHO IS RIGHT?

DOES PREPPING FOR HIGH-STAKES TESTS INTERFERE WITH TEACHING?

States require students to pass a test in order to graduate or to receive a diploma.Some states offer different types of diplomas based on how well a student performs on a test. This type of testing is called high-stakes testing and it poses many questions. What does it mean to be "edu- cated" in a high-stakes testing environment? How reasonable is it to be making gate-keeping decisions based on a single test? What student and teacher behaviors do high-stakes testing encourage? The following debate raises these types of questions.

YES Nancy Buell teaches fourth grade at the Lincoln School in Brook- line, Massachusetts.She has taught for thirty-two years and serves on the state Board of Education's Advisory Council for Mathematics and Science.

As Iwatch my students debate how much taller fourth graders are than first graders, Iam struck by their intuitive use of significant features of the data.As in:

Lee: Fourth graders are 10 inches taller because the tallest fourth grader is 64 inches and the tallest first grader is 54 inches.

Tamara: A first grader is about 5 inches shorter. Ifound the middle height for each and just subtracted. The middle for the fourth graders is 57 inches and the middle for the first graders is between 51 inches and 52 inches.

Dana: 5 inches or 4 inches,because the most common height for first graders is 53 inches and the most common height for fourth graders is 58 inches or 57 inches.

These students are exploring ideas involving maximum, me- dian, and mode. They are considering what features to use to tell what is typical of the two groups so they can be compared. Students support their ideas with information in the data itself.They are devel- oping ways to think about data that will lead to a deep understand- ing of more formal statistics.

The rich mathematical discussions in my class are an outgrowth of my participation in professional development that focused on in- quiry-based teaching and the big ideas we should be teaching.

But since high-stakes testing arrived, professional development meetings often focus on how to improve test scores, not on how to improve learning.

Teaching that concentrates on improvi ng test scores is very lim- ited-by the nature of both testing and teaching. Testing involves sampling student knowledge. It is fragmented and only examines learning outcomes. It seldom looks at how well a student under- stands complex ideas.

A typical test item might give students a set of data and ask for the median. Students would not be asked to select the appropriat e statistic to address a question and justify their choice.Yet knowing

how to find the median, without knowing when to use it, is useless, except on tests.

If we teach facts and procedures likely to be on the test, with- out the deeper understanding behind them, we shortchange our students. We must not limit what we teach to what will be tested.

Many teachers feel pressured to choose teaching techniques that help with testing more than learning. They're urged to spend more time on information that mimics test items.

Students should, of course, know how to answer multiple choice, short answer, and open response questions, but teaching these test-taking skills should not be confused with teaching a sub- ject. Some teachers spend a day a week using test-like items, not to sample what children know,but to try to teach the content.

Teaching should build on what students already know and help them develop a rich web of interconnected ideas. Real learning in- volves inquiry, hypothesis testing, exploration,and reflection.

Teaching to the test will not help my students think about how to use features of data sets to answer real questions.Teaching to the test is not teaching.

NO Charlotte Crawford teaches fourth grade at Coteau-Bayou Blue School in Houma, Louisiana. A twenty-seven-year teaching veteran, she helped set the cut scores for her state's high-stakes fourth-grad e test and now serves on a state panel for staff development.

Preparing students to take high-stakes tests does not interfere with teaching. It enhances teaching.When used properly,high-stakes tests can focus attention on weaknesses in the curriculum and in the teaching of it, as well as furnish an assessment of student progress. Once identified, student weak areas can be strengthened.

When the new high-stakes tests and revised curriculum were introduced in Louisiana, along with new accountability standards, many teachers were bewildered at the prospect of being held ac- countable for teaching a new curriculum without being told how to teach it.

Yet many of these teachers were also open to the new ideas and began working to find ways to implement them. They were aided by funding from the state for additional reading materials an d in-service training.

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STANDARDS, ASSESSMENT, AND ACCO UNTABILITY •

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Teachers often feel overwhelmed by the changes involved in our state's rigorous new standards, but many Louisiana educators are beginning to take ownership of their new curriculum. They're growing confident when making scope and sequence decisions. They're consistently reevaluating what they have taught, and how they have taught it, so they can do better next time.

These educators are revam ping their classroom activities and their teacher-made tests to match them more closely to the format and tone of the state-mandated tests.

Helping students become familiar with the state-man dated test formats, by using them in the classroom, prevents having to spend valuable class time to "practice" for the high-stakes tests.

Learners, meanwhile, are reaping the benefits of having teach- ers who are determined that their students wi ll be as prepared as possible to relate the skills they learn in school to real-life situations. They're becoming lifelong learners, besides performing well on stan- dardized tests.

Some educators complai n that they must "teach to the test."

But others consider this to be a weak objection since the state tests focus on information and skills students are expected to kno w at certain points in their schooling.

These educators say the curriculum objectives covered by the state tests should be taught before the tests are given, with the re- maining objectives covered afterwards. This is a very workable ar- rangement when high-stakes tests are given early in the spring.

To be sure, some Louisiana educators are still resisting the changes that come with the state tests.

But most realize this is an idea whose time has come. In 1998, my school helped pilot the fourth-grade language arts

test. I was nervous about how my students would fare. When they finished, I asked for reaction s.

Much to my surprise, students calmly informed me that the state test was "kind of hard, kind of easy, kind of f un ."

That day, my students unwitti ngly reassured me that learners who are prepared for high-stakes tests need not fear them .

WHAT IS YOUR PERSPECTIVE ON THIS ISSUE?

Sour ce: "Does Pr epping for High- Stakes T ests Inter fer e with Te aching?" N E A T oday ( January 2001), p. 11. Repr inted by per mission of the National Edu cation As socia tion. A lso sear ch www.neatoday.org for more high stakes stories.

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