I’m not stating an opinion so much as trying to see what the rest of you think.
Do you feel that taking out a significant portion of the year to focus on preparation for state tests in school leads to a lower knowledge base in diff subjects?
Or do you feel that everything was the same before No Child Left Behind?
24 comments
I have nothing to compare it to, I’ve never had extensive conversations with anyone that’s done it differently.
I don’t remember spending a significant amount of the year focusing on state test preparation in my schools but I went to private school so maybe it’s just not something that I was exposed to or maybe it’s a new thing that wasn’t around in my time in school.
No, I feel like passing kids along when they don’t meet the standards of the testing is the problem. I teach Algebra and my kids need to get 42-44% of the questions correct on our state test to pass and earn the verified credit to fulfill a graduation requirement. That’s knowing less than half of the content and way too many of them don’t meet that threshold year after year. I’m getting kids that don’t know their basic multiplication facts but I’m supposed to teach them Algebra in a year.
It makes it super hard to differentiate and do those enriching tasks when basic standards can’t be uniformly and consistently met.
I don’t remember spending more than a handful of days a year on state testing or the prep thereof.
The only egregious class I can think of from my experience was AP English 3. The entire class revolves around writing for the final AP test. We had to write a certain way and talk a certain way in order to make it easier for the graders to follow along. It was also encouraged to use really “flowery” language as well.
I got to college and I had to unlearn everything from that class. It was good experience in writing but it was horrible for being able to write clearly and concisely
I think it hinders indivudal growth and personal interests. But, even with teaching to the test we still churn out engineers, professors, teachers, artists of varying degrees, and many other professionals.
Knowledge also is a combination of personal interest and applied skill which starts at home and the right teacher. You can have either or. But sometimes parents hinder personal interests of the child because “that interest doesn’t make money”
It can be fine, but the state tests need to be designed well.
MCAS here in Massachusetts has its faults, but teachers have been more or less “teaching to the test” for 30 years now, and look at the results. MCAS isn’t perfect, but it’s probably one of the better standardized testing programs in the country, if not the world for measuring student success and school effectiveness.
No, the issue is lowering testing standards *and* passing kids even if they fail.
“Teaching to the test” is what we *should* be doing. Define important information that people need to know, and then test that said information is both taught and retained
I think that standardization takes the soul out of teaching and makes it hard for teachers to be passionate, which leads to more kids losing engagement.
Our education system and standards vary widely from school to school, but I would say there are larger widespread problems than just “teaching to the test”.
So many of our school systems are top-heavy with administration, and are also mired in a “this is just how things are done” mentality.
If things have been done well, that’s not a problem, but something to note is that a lot of our school systems and models were based around creating factory workers and people that would do well in that setting.
That’s not what we’ve needed for a long time now, and certainly isn’t the best way to encourage learning.
I much prefered when a teacher more or less told us what was going to be on the test. Sometimes there was just too much to study, memorizing the right facts by chance was near impossible. Like I’d love for teachers to go on about what they’re passionate about, but at the end of the day I need to pass tests to continue with school, and it’s hard to enjoy learning when you’re worried about failing.
What made me mad once is when a teacher held an after-school study group, specified that we should write this one piece of information down because it was important, and then it wasn’t even on the test. It made me frustrated, because I spent my free time going to this study group and it didn’t even help me improve my grade. I didn’t go back after that.
In college things were different because most of my classes didn’t do test based grades, it was discussion boards+essays. I got better grades because I could pick the topics I found most interesting, and I generally felt like I learned more.
Yes. It means that instead of teaching learning techniques and critical thinking skills, teachers teach students to memorize the test content. The good teachers are able to teach specific knowledge and broader learning skills at the same time, but not si good teachers only really teach one, and specific knowledge is both easier to teach and easier to assess.
Outsiders hear “teaching to the test” and get all riled up for zero reason. I have a ton of teacher friends and family members. Basically, standard stuff you teach is on the test. Duh. Like others have said, in order to pass the class (like the high school algebra example someone gave) requirements are very low. Stop blaming teachers and start blaming high schoolers who don’t have their multiplication facts memorized.
As a teacher I would say that a lot depends on the quality of the test. If the test measures something close to what it should measure, then you won’t be “taking out a specific portion of the year” to prepare for it. You’ll be preparing for it all year just by teaching.
I went to school before NCLB was introduced, but there were already state tests, at least in my state (California.) When I started teaching it was definitely during the “fanatical test prep” era, but I never focused on test prep to the expense of teaching concepts. The concepts on the test aren’t all that different from what students should be learning anyway.
There was a really strong emphasis from administrators at that time on having a specific objective (“At the end of this lesson, students will be able to…”) and posting the specific standard that goes along with the objective.
The introduction of Common Core where I am generally alleviated a lot of this burden, as the tests were perceived as somewhat more open ended. I haven’t changed much about how I teach, but the emphasis on strict patterns from administration has definitely lessened.
So in short, I would say that the problem with teaching to the test is simply that the test is an insufficient goal. Teach students beyond the test and the test will be no real obstacle.
I think it used to be much worse when I was in school. This was right after No Child Left Behind was passed and schools could be essentially gutted without good results. The test I remember were written in a way that I’d say 50-80% of doing well was knowing testing strategies rather than actual content. Modern tests I’ve seen seen better at emphasizing application and content.
I think an overlooked reason that state testing can be a problem is the stress it puts on students. While tests really measure how well teachers and faculty are doing, often faculty offload the stress onto the students. This was very explicit when I was in school. “Do well or else next year we won’t have funding for activities you want” was a very common threat. I haven’t seen teacher be as explicit in schools I work in now but I have seen degrees of pressuring the students still. It’s just not fair to put that responsibility on the students when they are children.
For history, yes. Last year, I had written answers that students could evaluate and answer as they saw fit. I often gave partial credit for an answer, and it was how history programs do things in college. Unfortunately, my high school is not in a good place academically, so our tests are low. It wasn’t necessarily on me for standardized testing for the state with low scores. After the year, my principal understood my perspective and why I did what I did, bur she wanted my tests to be all multiple choice. It then mirrors their standard testing, but IMO, robs them of the ability to evaluate the “why” for history answers.
No. People making 85% seem like a bad grade is causing this shit. When you prioritize getting 100% and making getting a B-B+ seem like a bad grade it makes it so that kids try to streamline the easiest way to get the optimal grade (memorization), rather than teaching the material for them to learn
No, America has always had a somewhat ambivalent attitude towards education beyond literacy and arithmetic unless it was directly tied to employment. “If you’re so smart why aren’t you rich.” is a very American attitude towards knowledge for its own sake and that’s way older than NCLB.
Also I’m a high school teacher and we don’t teach to the test (except AP classes and that’s different).
The real problem seems to be that kids can’t even pass a basic test after being taught what is on it for a full school year.
There are two take aways here: first, just do the basics correctly. I mentioned in another reply, but my kid’s elementary school has 24-26 kids per teacher. I don’t know how a single teacher is expected to handle that many little kids of different ability. There are also only 180 or so instruction days in the year. Kids without involved parents are spending half the year not learning anything.
Second, there are some kids who will never pass these tests. We should strive to have a society where even people who can’t pass high school reading/math can have a normal life.
Fixing these is obviously easier said than done; literally doubling the amount of teachers and making the buildings for them to teach in would require monumental tax increases that voters are not going to approve.
While I was in school some 20 years ago, I don’t remember any specific times there was preparation for state/national tests – with the only real exception being ACT/SAT’s.
Overall though I get enough of insight about where education is at today from a sister fast approaching her doctorate in education – and while there’s a certain valid argument to make for No Child Left Behind, I think a lot of the ‘need’ for regulations/legislation for NCLB is *because* of changing social attitudes toward teaching and education.
To really explain what I mean, there was the thing a few years ago about “2+2=22”. Teacher told the kid they were wrong, it’s 4. Teacher then goes on to lose their job, be called a nazi, and all kinds of other ridiculous crap, all because they were trying to teach the kid the most common understanding of 1st grade level math, and managed to offend the kid & parents when telling them they were wrong.
That’s a more ‘extreme’ example of what I mean, but it paints the picture well enough that teachers are losing the ability to even just do their job, out of some misguided ideal that we dare not offend anyone even when they are (objectively) wrong.
Standardized testing seems like the only fair way to compare kids/schools. I think that attacking standardized testing is normalizing a drop in standards. Ie. Kids today should be able to do the same math problems that kids 10/20/30/40/50 years ago could do. And it is fair to ask kids the same questions and compare which schools are able to meet benchmarks and which fall short.
Yes, some kids are better able to perform as a standardized test requires. But the average will offer a snapshot of the schools- both how they’re doing and/or which schools/areas have the kids that need more help/attention/support. Getting rid of standardized testing is just hiding what is going on. What help will those kids get? What accountability and/or support will schools in need get?
It depends. Is getting a license dependent on passing a test? If so, teach me what I need to know to pass the test. It won’t do me any good if I can’t get certified because I can’t pass the test. This happened while I was in medical school. Fortunately, a lot of us recognized we weren’t being prepared properly and we studied the material we needed on our own.
I’ve asked teacher friends what they mean by “teaching the test”. It seems like if you’re teaching them the test, you’re teaching the material on the test, which is what we want them to know. They don’t agree, but I’m still unclear what they mean by that phrase. I’d love clarity if anyone can explain it.
If the tests and curricula are appropriately structured and aligned “teaching to the test” and “teaching the subject” should be the same thing. AP classes are entirely based around teaching to the test and those were some of the best educational experiences I had in high school.