Public School Teacher...Private School Parent

I recently started following Badass Teachers Association on facebook.  The page is chock full of complaints about standardized testing from teachers across the country.  A recent post links to an article from the Sun Sentinel, a newspaper from a small Florida town.  The article, titled School Boardmember withdraws son from public school, briefly explains how a board member, Abby Freedman, removed her 12 year old son from the public school system in which she is employed and enrolled him in a private school costing a measly $23,900 in tuition.  The reason: she was sick of the standardized testing.  At Westglades Middle School in Coral Springs, FL, the culminating test taken each year counts for 30% of a student’s overall grade. 

Abby Freedman is not alone.  According to a 2004 Washington Post story (I couldn’t find more recent data) 35% of public school teachers in Baltimore send their own children to private school.   This doesn’t mean that all teachers withdraw their kids because of testing procedures.  I am sure that the list of reasons is lengthy.  However, I doubt that Freedman is the first of her kind.

I don’t think I would have acted in the same way as Freedman, but I do support her decision.  According to the Sun’s article, Westglades Middle School has pretty prestigious academics.  If this is true, what does the school have to worry about when it comes time for the end of the year test?  It seems as if their students will find themselves well prepared.

In contrast, one test that counts for 30% of a student’s grade is intense, especially at the middle school level.  It also puts a lot of pressure on teachers to have high performing students.  Freedman claims that instructors at Westglades Middle School do not teach to the test but I have to think that there   Teachers who were once dedicated to creative, experimental learning will find themselves spending a little more time with the number two pencils and scantron sheets.  I worry about Westglades Middle School not because their students will not perform at a proficient level, but because their teachers may start to slip as they become more and more focused on testing numbers. 

will be a little of that going on.

NY State Testing- How high should they set the bar?

One of Diane Ravitch’s recent blog posts, Suburban New York Parents Don’t Believe Common Core Tests, really got me thinking so I checked out the original article that Ravitch references.  The article begins by rattling off some test scores of the most recent New York state tests and then moves into parental commentary about the scores.  Students performed lower on the new test than they had in years past. 

Parent comments range from anger, to confusion, to denial.  Some parents claim that the tests lack validity.  Others argue that the lower scores are going to hurt the self-esteem of young children.  Not one person says that perhaps the tests were accurate, and the New York Public Schools have some work to do.

I was frustrated by the lack of accountability that all commentators (mostly parents) were taking.  Perhaps some of the teachers in the schools were not providing a rigorous curriculum for their students.  Just because a student earns a high mark from their teacher, does not mean that they have acquired comparable knowledge to students from another school.  To help justify this point, I share with you my tragedy of AP Calculus. 

When I was a senior in high school I enrolled in AP Calculus.  The teacher of the course was someone had taught me both Geometry my freshman year and Pre-Calculus my junior year.  During the first three quarters I earned a B, and two A’s.  I thought I was going to ace the AP test.  However, on the day of the test I was completely taken aback by the test and felt entirely under prepared.  There were concepts on the test that I had never even seen- let alone learned!  A few weeks later, I found out that I earned a 1... the lowest score possible..

I didn’t blame the AP test or College Board for making an inaccurate, too difficult test.  I didn't think they were trying to trick me.  I was, however, incredibly frustrated with my high school.  I felt that I had been mislead throughout the course.  By earning A’s, I viewed myself as highly competent in Calculus.  Little did I know that my teacher’s standards were far off from the average AP Calculus classroom.

Jonathan Burman, who commented on behalf of the state Education Department in the article, seems to agree with my point.  Burman claims, “...the empirical evidence is clear: Right now far too many of our students are leaving high school unprepared for college and careers."  I think it is safe to say that the new test in New York is more difficult than the one in the past.  Should people run from it or face it head on?  What ever happened to high standards? 

The Problem with Education

Educational Historian Diane Ravitch recently blogged her opinion on the flaws with the American Education System in response to one of her readers, Gordon Wilder.  Ravitch boldly claims that the fatality of the education system occurred when people lost sight of the real goal of education, teaching values, and in contrast tunneled in on test scores.

The world of standardized testing and quantitative data is foreign to me.  As a private school teacher, my daily routine is not driven by policy-makers far removed from the classroom.  I write my curriculum.  I create the students’ activities.  I determine the assessments and standards.  Is this the right way to run a classroom?  I’m not entirely sure.  There are days that I long for more guidance and a uniform benchmark to see how effective I am in comparison to other teachers.  But then I talk to colleagues who came from public school and feel relieved that my classroom scores aren’t plastered around the faculty room for all to see. 

Ravitch makes a comment that, “pretty soon they will be having classes on how to take tests” and my response to Ravitch is that they all ready do.  Companies like the Princeton Review and Kaplan function in preparing people for standardized tests.  Students enroll in courses that not only teach them content material, but also tips and strategies such as when to skip questions and how to eliminate choices on these standardized tests.  Sounds like a great way to prep for the big test… if you can afford it.

Cost of Kaplan SAT Prep from www.kaptest.com

What about the students who cannot afford to take a Kaplan course?  Aren’t they destined to do worse than the child who takes the course teaching them “how to test”?  In my opinion, this is one of the greatest problems with standardized testing.  There is no such thing as an “even playing field”.  There is always one group that has an advantage or a one-up over the next.  Sadly, our education system has decided to make these scores the mark of success.  One number is determining the worth of a student.