CAT Tracks for November 2, 2010
TEACHING TO THE TEST

More eye-rolling on my part...over a "fluff piece" about standardized testing and the changes that would supposedly cure all ills.

Was inclined to move on...until I read the mini-bio at the end of the article:

Well...La-Di-Da!

Our "expert" on education is a teacher dropout...one of those Teach-for-America "temps" (like Michelle Rhee...who couldn't/wouldn't finish her term as DC Schools Chancellor.)

Miki did her missionary/martyrdom work at a low-income school in San Jose...then quickly moved on to her "real life"...her "real interest"...getting her master's degrees in business and government...positioning herself to make the big bucks. Miki presumes to give advice to those lesser mortals who actually teach the children that Miki so quickly left behind...


POSTSCRIPT:

I "Googled" Miki...

    Middle School Math Teacher
    Teach For America
    (Non-Profit; Education Management industry)
    June 2007 — June 2009 (2 years 1 month)

Two years and one effing month...

...after which, Miki landed a job in the Washington DC school system for three months. (Must be nice to have fellow Teach for America alums scattered about the countryside!)

Glad the middle-school students in San Jose weren't expecting "Superman"...


From the San Francisco Chronicle...


Link to Original Story

Teaching to a different test

Miki Litmanovitz

For years now, a war has been brewing between two sides of the education world.

One side argues that standardized tests are necessary to evaluate teacher performance, and the other argues that these tests are an inadequate measure of the hard work that teachers pour into their classrooms.

With the recent release of the movie "Waiting for 'Superman,' " that war has spilled out of the classrooms and into the mainstream. And at the heart of this war is the commonly heard argument that standardized tests cause teachers to "teach to the test."

"Teaching to the test" has become a derogatory phrase, conjuring up images of teachers and schools - driven by the knowledge that they are being judged based on their students' performance on standardized tests - throwing out engaging and creative lessons and replacing them with rote memorization techniques and tricks that somehow get students to answer the questions correctly without mastering the content.

The conclusion that all too many draw is that to prevent teaching to the test, we must eliminate the tests altogether or at least dramatically de-emphasize their role. But the reality is that we need these tests. The best way to ensure that our children are actually learning - and that teachers are doing a good job teaching - is to test students to see what knowledge they have retained and what skills they have developed. We can't rely on teachers or schools to write these tests, because they could write easy questions to artificially inflate the scores. For reliable results, we need standardized tests.

Of course, no test is perfect, but tests are the best method of measurement we have come up with, and they are far better than nothing. Many have argued that we should get rid of standardized tests and replace them with subjective teacher evaluations usually performed by principals; but even if principals try to be as objective as possible, the observations would be able to evaluate only how well a teacher can run her classroom or manage his students. This doesn't actually address the question at hand: How well are students learning and internalizing the material? At the end of the day, if you want to see how much children have learned, you need to ask them questions.

So how, then, do we test children without giving incentives for teachers to teach test-taking skills rather than content or a narrowed range of subjects rather than a broad-based education? The answer is simple: Change the tests.

Are you concerned that because many tests cover only math and reading, schools will pay too little attention to science and history? Then let's make schools accountable for their science and history test scores rather than just math and reading Are you worried that teachers are focusing on test-taking strategies instead of the concrete math and reading skills that students will need in the real world? Then ask rigorous questions that reflect the kinds of skills that allow students to succeed on their paths to becoming doctors, construction workers or computer scientists.

Are you uneasy with the way a single day of testing can make or break a school's funding for an entire school year? Then let's give the test in several smaller sections spread throughout the year. Throwing out the tests isn't the answer; making them more rigorous is. Education reformers, like former Washington, D.C., Public Schools Chancellor Michelle Rhee, have long supported more rigorous standardized tests. Just recently, the New Teacher Project, founded by Rhee, published a study that concludes that "teachers should be evaluated against clear, rigorous performance expectations based primarily on evidence of student learning."

But perhaps more surprisingly, teachers unions support more rigorous testing as well. At the 2008 American Federation of Teachers national convention, federation President Randi Weingarten said that "tests, if they are fair and accurate, and aligned with a rich curriculum, can play an important role in holding teachers, administrators and schools accountable for much of student achievement."

It seems that Rhee and Weingarten can agree on something after all. To be sure, any test can make teachers susceptible to teaching gimmickry instead of content. The SATs, which we currently deem good enough to determine college admissions, have bred a cottage industry around test-taking strategies. The truth, however, is that the gimmicks help only at the margins; to succeed on well-designed tests, there is no substitute for mastering the content. The only way teachers can "teach to" a good test is to teach the knowledge and skills needed to succeed on it - which is precisely what we hope for our children. So instead of tossing the tests out, let's insist that we have better and more rigorous tests. And when we do, we'll be glad to hear that teachers are teaching to the test.

Miki Litmanovitz was a member of the Teach for America program, in which she taught middle-school math at a low-income school in San Jose. She is completing master's degrees at Harvard Business School and the Harvard Kennedy School of Government, where she is a Zuckerman Fellow through the Center for Public Leadership.


The views expressed above are NOT the official position of the Cairo Association of Teachers.