Post from a Guest Blogger

The following was written by Emily Monroe Wade, a Special Education teacher and my former student. She deserves an audience. And that's what I really think. It’s the month of April again. For some people it means beautiful weather and new beginnings. April fills me with nothing more than dread. Dread because I have to completely put the thing that I love doing everyday on hold for a month only to do something that I loathe. A job that is required of me for reasons I still have yet to figure out. It’s a job that may hold my career at stake; it’s a job that may hold my school at stake. This month- long job has expectations. In some cases, these expectations are to perform miracles. Other expectations require hoop jumping, lion taming, trapeze swinging and other circus -related metaphors. This job is state testing. I have been teaching for 11 years. State testing has been the old reliable constant these 11 years in a field that is constantly changing. These changes are made in an effort to find better ways to reach kids and give them their best chance at a good life which is one reason I am curious as to why testing hasn’t evolved. There is one change I have noticed and that is that every year it seems to get worse. This year has been especially brutal due to over-crowding, which has resulted in higher numbers of special education and English language learners. It has also been painful because of the implementation of the new 3rd grade retention law. This is a law that was so brilliantly thought up by state legislators and a state superintendent that know very little about education. I could go on forever about this one, but I will spare you a little for now. Stay tuned. There is so much work involved in administering state tests that in my building it takes two reading specialists, two language arts assistants, and two special education teachers and the Gifted and Talented teacher to get everything ready. Those six people could actually use the assistance of the ELL teacher and her assistant, too, if she were available to help but unfortunately they spend an entire month before regular state testing giving language proficiency tests to the 350 or more ELL students. The tests arrive in cardboard boxes of test booklets and answer sheets. There is about 400-450 of them, maybe more, because 3rd and 4th graders take two tests and 5th graders take four. These items need to be labeled with both handwritten and sticker labels, sorted, stacked, checked and sorted again. It takes days to get them ready. This year, this has had to be done with the regular scored test and a field test that has to be given toward the end of the testing window. The format with the field test is completely different from the regular required test that it too takes hours of preparation. The other major thing that has to be done is scheduling. This is a grueling process that requires solving a very complicated puzzle. That is because the Special Education and the ELL schedules must be done in addition to the regular classroom schedules. The special education and ELL schedules take hours of planning. Between both programs there are about 70 kids who test outside the regular classroom. This is because the students in these programs get special accommodations to the test in an effort to make them more successful, but not every child gets the same accommodation. The main thing that must be taken into account when we do the schedule is that each group being given the test can be no larger than 5 students. Each of the 5 students in the group must also have the same accommodations aside from the small group. Plus the 5 kids per group take multiple tests depending on what grade they are in. We have some kids that require individual testing as well. Also, no kid can take two tests twice in one day. It should be easy if we are given an entire month, however, if we are sticking with the circus metaphor then the “testing window” is much more like a clown car for the special education and ELL teachers. In order to meet all the needs of our students and give them their best chance of passing we must cram as many testing sessions as possible during the days we are allowed to give tests. Perhaps one upside that could possibly be taken away from the scheduling process is that it involves so much critical thinking that hopefully it will keep our minds sharp up into old age. During testing the testing coordinator and players feel much like they are in a circus, too. The testing coordinator, who in our case is one of the reading specialists, is running around finding people to monitor the teachers administering the tests, dealing with paperwork, putting out fires such as absences or new students starting school within the testing window. What else says “Welcome to your new school” more than giving a state mandated test? The special education and ELL teachers are trying to round up the students they are testing that session because they sometimes wind up all over the building. This is because of miscommunication or a mistake on the schedule. Did I forget to mention that in addition to coming up with a special education and ELL testing schedule, we also have to come up with a special education and ELL NOT-testing schedule? That is because we have to find somewhere for the kids not testing with their class and not currently testing with one of us somewhere to go. On some days that is up to 55 kids we have to find a temporary placement for. If the ELL teachers, the special education teachers, and reading specialists are completely incapacitated for a whole month that means that kids who need services from those specialists are not getting them. For some kids, that could be an amount of time for a whole reading level worth of growth with proper instruction. This month without services is especially a conundrum for a special education student who needs access to education modifications and practices that may result in performing better on the test that he or she is unfairly forced to take. Why must we go through all of this? What is actually accomplished with testing? It doesn’t make the students better people. It doesn’t really measure what they know, but really it’s what they don’t know. It puts a limit on something that should be limitless. I may have misspoken up in one of the earlier paragraphs about the changing of testing. Some changes are coming down the pike, but honestly it is more of the same. What is measured and how the test is formatted is going to change but the expectations will be the same, especially the expectations that come with the new 3rd grade retention law. This law states that EVERY child should be able to pass the test regardless of ability. In many circumstances it is asking a child to perform a miracle. How can a child with a learning disability who has a learning rate much lower than the average 3rd grader suddenly triple his or her learning rate in time to pass the 3rd grade test? The evolution I and many other career educators would like to see take place with testing is a personalized approach. Let’s start comparing children to themselves instead of trying to fit children in this little box. Isn’t that the opposite of what we want for them in life? Let’s celebrate little Johnny starting the year recognizing 50 words and ending the year knowing 300. Let’s praise little Sophie’s teacher for helping her go from a level D reading level to a level I in the span of a school year.* Let’s stop wasting valuable time and school personnel on something that does not contribute to the educational growth of a child. *Our district uses a alphabetic letter system for assigning a reading level to a student which is modeled after Fountas and Pinnell.