The Champaign, IL News-Gazette has a long article on the new rites of spring, the ISAT (Illinois Standards Achievement Tests) (thanks to Devoted Reader Michael S for the link):
Cheryl O'Leary, principal of Champaign's Garden Hills School, and her teachers are getting students there psyched up for the ISATs to be given this week by planning a series of special events at the school and by giving them incentives to show up on test days.
"We're on countdown for the ISATs," said Cheryl O'Leary, principal of Garden Hills School last week of pretest and test-time activities that included a Wheel of Wisdom – like Wheel of Fortune – presentation Friday sponsored by the PTA to get students excited about taking tests.
That seems like it would be as difficult as turning lead into gold. I appreciate O'Leary's enthusiasm, but do kids need to be made excited about everything in school?
One director is refreshingly pro-testing:
"High stakes tests like the ISAT have influenced districts greatly because of the accountability factor," said Mary Muller, the district's director of elementary curriculum...She said administrators take a positive approach to testing, which is sometimes criticized for taking up increasing teaching time in classrooms and for forcing educators to tailor their teaching to what's asked on the tests.
"You hear the negatives, but these tests really can give everyone a better picture of how students are doing so we can improve instruction," Muller said. "That's the missing piece. The ultimate goal is to raise student achievement, and the way to do that is to align with state standards and to assess what we're teaching."
Stephen Lucas, principal of Edison Middle School in Champaign, gets it as well:
"As far as this teaching-to-the-test thing goes, my idea is that if it's a good test that really measures state standards and what the district wants to achieve, of course it's a good thing," he said. "If you have good standards and the tests measure them, of course we want to teach to the test."
Actually, it's my hunch that a lot of teachers, principals, and administrators are pro-testing and think the same way as Muller and Lucas. The news media, however, tend to take a relentlessly anti-testing stance, and it's rare to see a news article like this one prominently feature pro-testing comments.
Posted by kswygert at April 5, 2004 12:10 PM