Pennsylvania’s Broken Testing Promise – We Don’t Assess Students Less If We Demand Constant Diagnostic Tests by Steven Singer

Originally posted at: Pennsylvania’s Broken Testing Promise – We Don’t Assess Students Less If We Demand Constant Diagnostic Tests

Downcast faces, dropping eyes, desperate boredom.

That’s not what I’m used to seeing from my students.

But today they were all slumped over their iPads in misery taking their Classroom Diagnostics Tools (CDT) test.

It’s at times such as these that I’m reminded of the promise made by Pennsylvania’s Governor, Tom Wolf.

He pledged that this year we’d reduce the amount of time public school students spend taking standardized assessments.

“Students, parents, teachers and others have told us that too much time in the classroom is used for test taking,” he said.

“We want to put the focus back on learning in the classroom, not teaching to a test. Standardized testing can provide a useful data point for a student’s performance, but our focus should be on teaching students for future success, not just the test in front of them.”

So at his urging we made slight cuts to our Pennsylvania System of School Assessment (PSSA) tests – the assessment for grade 3-8 students.

We removed two sections of the PSSA – one in math, one in reading – and reduced the number of science questions.

This can cut testing by as much as 48 minutes in math, 45 minutes in reading, and 22 minutes in science.

And that’s good news.

But it’s not exactly the kind of sea change the state claims, given the Department of Education’s recommendations for additional tests on top of the PSSA.

That’s right. The state wants schools to give the CDT assessment an additional 3 to 5 times a year in reading, math and science.

Unlike the PSSA, this is a voluntary assessment. Districts can decide against it, but the department’s flunkies are crisscrossing the Commonwealth advising we all give the CDT as much as possible.

So that’s between 50-90 minutes for each assessment. A district that follows the state’s guidelines would be adding as much as 270 minutes of testing every seven weeks. In a given year, that’s 1,350 minutes (or 22.5 hours) of additional testing!

Pop quiz, Governor Wolf. Cutting testing by 115 minutes while adding 1,350 minutes results in a net loss or a net gain?

The answer is an increase of 1,235 minutes (or more than 20 hours) of standardized testing.

In my classroom, that means students coming in excited to learn, but being told to put away their books, pocket their pencils and put their curiosity on standby.

The folks who work at the Department of Education instead of in the classroom with living, breathing children, will tell you that these CDT tests are a vital tool to help students learn.

They provide detailed information about which skills individual students need remediation on.

But who teaches that way?

Billy, you are having trouble with this kind of multiple-choice question, so here are 100 of them.

We don’t do that. We read. We write. We think. We communicate.

And if somewhere along the way, we struggle, we work to improve that while involved in a larger project that has intrinsic value – such as a high interest book or a report on a hero of the civil rights movement.

When learning to walk, no one concentrates on just bending your knees. Even if you have stiff joints, you work them out while trying to get from point A to point B.

Otherwise, you reduce the exercise to boring tedium.

That’s what the state is suggesting we do.

Make something essentially interesting into humdrum monotony.

Teachers don’t need these diagnostics. We are deeply invested in the act of learning every day.

I know if my students can read by observing them in that act. I know if they can write by observing them doing it. I know if they can communicate by listening to them arguing in Socratic seminar. I read their poems, essays and short stories. I watch their iMovies and Keynote projects.

I’m a teacher. I am present in the classroom.

That tells me more than any standardized diagnostic test ever will.

It’s ironic that on a Department of Education “CDT Frequently Asked Questions” sheet, the assessment is described as “minimizing testing time.”

That’s just bad math.

And my student’s know it.

The district just sent out a letter telling parents and students they could take advantage of a school voucher to go to a local parochial school at public expense.

When presented with the prospect of another day of CDT testing in my room, one of my brightest students raised his hand and asked if kids in the local Catholic school took the test.

I told him I didn’t know – though I doubt it. They COULD take the test. It is available to nonpublic schools, but do you really think they’re going to waste that much instruction time?

Heck! They don’t even take the same MANDATORY standardized testing! Why would they bother with the optional kind!?

It is the public schools that are hopelessly tangled in the industrial testing complex. That’s how the moneyed interests “prove” the public schools are deficient and need to be replaced by privatized ones.

It’s an act of sabotage – and with the CDT it’s an act of self-sabotage.

School directors and administrators need to be smarter. The only way to beat a rigged game is not to play.

And the only way to reduce testing is to TAKE FEWER TESTS!

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