Editorial

An editorial in the paper struck me today. Not just because the topic was STAR testing but because it was written by Dale Jones, a Cupertino principal. Here it is.

Every year at this time I commit what I consider to be professional malpractice. As a school principal, I like to think that my bottom line is what's good for kids, but each year as I oversee the annual ritual of STAR testing, I become further convinced that it's not only harmful to kids, but it's damaging to the institution of public education as well. If I was a doctor and was asked to oversee a procedure that to the best of my knowledge was harmful to my patient, I have to believe that I would resist. So I have to ask myself, is my relationship with my students that different?
Should I not resist a practice that all of my professional training and experience,
as well as my conscience, tells me is wrong?

My school is an English Language Development (ELD) center for our district. This year we have students from over 35 different countries who speak more than 28 different languages. One day in the middle of our two week window for STAR testing, one of our ELD teachers called me on the intercom just before recess because three of her students hadn't finished the section of the test they were taking that morning. They'd been testing for more than an hour, forced to take a multiple choice test in a language they're just beginning to grasp, and they had to continue testing through their recess, because if they take a break they might talk about the test and violate the strict security measures surrounding STAR. I went and sat in the classroom so the teacher could have her break, which of course she's entitled to and deserves, but which, for at least that day, is denied to these students who sit struggling with words they haven't yet been taught, after having been given directions that must be read verbatim that I'm certain they didn't entirely understand.

I feel only guilt as I watch these conscientious young children struggle todo their very best. While their persistence is admirable, I also wonder if part of the reason they try so hard is because they believe that I want them to do well on this test, when what I really want is for them to randomly bubble in the rest of their answer sheets so they can go outside and be children again.

We spend two weeks on STAR testing at our school. I remember taking similar tests as a child of the same school system. I think those tests were probably an hour or so long. Like many of my peers, I was much more interested in sports than academics for much of my childhood, so I'm sure my performance suffered as it grew closer to recess. Now we give a test that totals more than 360 minutes in the second grade! We spread this out over several days, but do we really believe that testing fatigue doesn't impact the validity of the results? More importantly, what message does it
send to our children when we devote this kind of time to a test? It's no surprise to me that many of my students feel that school is essentially over after STAR testing. We may say otherwise, but they can tell by not only the time but by the entire "testing milieu" that this is the most important thing that we do. It's the only time when the gardeners aren't allowed to use the mowers or blowers, and every possible interruption from fire drills to field trips is not allowed to infringe on testing time.

I know that I live and work in a community that has placed great value on the results of these tests. It's disappointing to me that a valley that prides itself on innovation and ingenuity has so easily been duped into believing that STAR scores are a valid indicator of the quality of our schools. Even the psychometricians who create multiple choice tests admit that they're a poor tool for evaluating what a student knows. They're designed to rank students, and schools, based on a superficial measurement of a very limited range of knowledge and skills. Higher forms of knowledge, such as evaluation and synthesis of information do not lend themselves to assessment through multiple choice tests, neither do creativity, communication skills, physical abilities, musical and artistic talent, etc., etc. This is why some critics of testing have rightly cautioned that if your child's school's test scores rise rapidly there may be more reason for alarm than anything else, as it's very likely that an over emphasis on STAR results has led to a narrowing of the curricula to that which is tested, in both content and quality.

Parents are often surprised when I tell them that the results of STAR have little to no instructional value. The security surrounding the tests prohibits teachers from viewing their students' tests, so there is no opportunity for error analysis, or even to know which questions most of your students answered correctly and which ones they missed. In educational jargon we call a test that guides future instruction a formative assessment, but there¹s nothing formative about STAR. We don't even receive the results until the following school year.

As a principal in Cupertino, it's of course anathema for me to speak out against STAR testing. We take great pride in our test scores. They keep our home prices high, so high in fact that our teachers can't afford to live here. But I also believe that it's precisely because of our elevated test scores that we have an obligation to speak out against them. Wouldn't it send a great message if one of the highest ranking districts in the state collectively admitted that our scores are really a reflection of the demographics of our community and the educational level of our
parents, and that the test scores really don't reflect the true quality of our
schools? Or are we afraid of what a deeper and more reflective look at our schools might reveal?

I have colleagues in other districts who can't speak out against STAR testing for fear of losing their jobs, and most of them work in our most challenging schools and are routinely "beat up" for their low test scores. We can pull them up, and in the long run help ourselves, by educating the public about the limitations of STAR scores and the many alternatives that do a much better job of measuring how much our children have learned, as opposed to what they innately know.

It's time for teachers, administrators, and parents in "high performing" schools and districts to speak out about the fallacy and danger of using only test scores to evaluate our schools, to educate the community about the injustices of ranking schools and the harmful effects it has on "low performing" schools. It's time to end our complicity with a system of measuring students and schools that amounts to educational malpractice.

The Universe Is In Charge

I love being reminded of how powerless I am to control people or events in the big scheme of things. Last October I received a notification from the sheriff that my old Saturn had been impounded. My name was still on the title as the lien holder because I sold it to a friend's daughter. Well, since that time the friend walked out of my life. I tried to do the right thing and contact the party involved so my name could be taken off the title and any further legal notifications. Unfortunately she chose not to answer my phone calls or e-mails. So I just let it go. Literally. I never thought about it again knowing that when the time was right the problem would solve itself. So yesterday I came home to a folded up note stuck in my front door. The first thought that went through my mind was that it was an angry neighbor complaining about my newly adopted dog. To my relief I read that SS wanted to transfer the title. Yes, everything happens in its own time. We just have to be patient and allow the universe to handle it.

Unfair Testing

I have never been a naye sayer to testing. We all need some sort of assessment and evaluation procedure. I'm not saying that I should be evaluated based on these numbers but testing is just part of the job. Today is day 3 of testing. We made it through the practice test and the first reading test. Of course this includes the "trick" question on the practice test on equivalent fractions AND the fact that there are 14 versions of the test that require different directions. They go something like this: If you have versions 1-8 you will begin on page 12 #29 and work through page 17 and #41. If you have version 9-14 turn to page 8 #12 and work through page 11 #28. You have got to be kidding me. These are 8 year old children we are talking about. We actually got through that pretty well on Part 1. Then we had Part 2 this morning with similar directions. For some reason it was much more difficult for them to understand today. Maybe they just thought it was a one time thing and they survived it yesterday. After recess they had Part 3 and as usual I sat down to read the test. That's when I started taking notes on "Important things to teach next year." Let's see there were questions on interrogatives, exclamatory statements, articles (there are actually only 3 of them in the entire English language - P-L-E-A-S-E), homophones, the meaning of bi in bicycle, and lots and lots of stuff on syllabication. I guess my greatest complaint is the distraction of the phrasing of questions. They are required to read a big long passage and then the first question might be about the correct syllable division of a word within the text. These kids are ready to answer questions about the main idea or how a sentence could have been worded better and they have a question about dividing the word animal or the key words on a dictionary page for kite. They may call the text they read an article, a passage or a story. We are just not testing skills. We are testing question interpretation and test taking ability. There are even questions that I don't really know the correct answer to. One of the questions was on a folk tale about a lamb who tricks a wolf. The sentence in the story was something about a "lake through the trees." The question asked for the phrase that would give more details about the trees and here are the answer choices: woods, forest, tall green things or oaks and pines. Now I think the answer is oaks and pines but if one of my kids was writing about a lake through the trees you better believe I would conference with them if they wrote a lake through the oaks and pines. Do oaks and pines even grow in the same place? I don't think so. Personally I like "a lake through the woods" Thank God I'm the teacher and don't have to take the test! Well tomorrow we have 2 math tests so we'll see how they can confuse my little darlings in the world of numbers.

Some Good News

Finally! Some good news! Today the superintendent called together all the kindergarten teachers and told them we were going back to 20:1 in kindergarten through 3rd grade. Yahoo! We can finally stop dressing in red and attending school board meetings. The parent and teacher speakers can go back to normal life and the school board members can stop squirming in discomfort. It seems that the superintendent "found" some "one time only" money that will fund K for the next 3 years and he promised to maintain it after that. So he finally took a stand. I am hopeful that this is the his first step in creating his own vision for the district. Another Yahoo! I can't ever remember being so happy for other people in my life before. Our K teachers can now go back to loving their jobs and taking pride in their work. That will be a wonderful thing. We have been so desperate for some good news that this feels almost foreign. My stomach and head are both spinning. HOORAY!