One Delaware mother is very, very concerned about her daughter's poor performance on the high-stakes eighth-grade mathematics exam, and she blames the tests. Reporter Victor Greto produces a sympathetic portrait of those who oppose the state testing:
When 13-year-old Courtney Suchanec received an outstanding achievement certificate for her math work at Kirk Middle School in Newark at the end of this school year, she threw it at her mother. I don't deserve this, the eighth-grader told Gail Patton, her mother.
"I told her she did deserve the award," Patton said. After all, Courtney earned a cumulative 3.95 grade point average at the middle school, and got straight A's in eighth grade. Her daughter's frustration did not come from her yearlong academic performance at school, Patton said. "It was the test."
The test she referred to is one of the Delaware Student Testing Program's standardized third-, fifth- and eighth-grade tests, some of which carry consequences such as mandatory summer school or retention...Courtney received a "2" or "below standard" on the math test...which meant having to take the test again, as well as the possibility of summer school. "She also has to have tutoring," Patton said. "This is a girl who has had As in math all her life."
Okay, granted, the test might be the problem - or were the classes the problem? Was there a serious disconnect between the class content and the testing standards (which would indicate the need for revised exams, not lower stakes)? Was grade inflation perhaps to blame, for boosting Courtney's "self-esteem" a bit higher than the test indicates? If Courtney suffers from test anxiety, it's understandable that she's frustrated at the situation, but this one story doesn't give us that much evidence.
While I feel sorry for her, I'd really like to know how many other students are having this problem. One child is a moving anecdote; many children would indicate a serious case of grade inflation, curriculum-test standard misalignment, or both. It's not that I don't agree that too much testing is harmful, or that younger children may be less likely to be able to perform well in high-stakes settings. But one test-anxiety-ridden child does not an formidable case against testing make.
And neither do these arguments against testing that appear later in the article:
When [teacher] Finnan taught social studies a couple of years ago, she said, half her class of 22 scored two or more grades below the standards on the reading portion of the test. To compensate for that, "Science and social studies got shortened because we spent so much time on reading," she said.
The next year, all her students met the test's standards, "but I didn't feel like I had the time to enjoy the kids. I felt like I was always pushing, driving and coaxing."
Is there a way to teach every kid in the class to read without some driving and coaxing? Since when is education supposed to be effort-free? And how can social studies be meaningful if a kid can't read?
Delmar principal Mark Holodick said the tests are a work in progress, and said there is too much emphasis now being placed on individual students.
"I've never seen students or adults respond well to the threat of failure or being punished for not performing," he said.
That's funny. Most adults I know understand, and respond to, the idea that punishment for bad performance is inherent in every part of our lives, whether we live in the collegiate, graduate, and post-graduate universes. Perhaps if you're a school principal in Delaware, you face no punishment for slacking off, but the real world demands that you accept punishment if you don't perform well in your college classes, your job, or your marriage. If you don't believe this, your professor, your boss, or your spouse's divorce lawyer will be happy to explain it to you.
Again, this is not to say that third-graders should be forced to live with high-stakes testing - but it's just plain silly to oppose testing for third-graders by insisting that adults don't live with high-stakes testing, of a sort, every day.
Posted by kswygert at July 23, 2003 10:41 AM