America's Education Dilemma: Numbers vs. Children

Classrooms are places of hope and discovery. I envision them as magic carpets that come unattached from stony roots to zip across time and the universe while an endlessly replenished all-you-can-eat buffet of knowledge and insight feeds and delights the riders. Classrooms are sacred spaces where young people grow up.

This is not how the United States Department of Education views classrooms, evidenced by its policy.

The core of the No Child Left Behind legislation demands proficiency, measured by standardized tests, from one hundred percent of students by the year 2014, a goal that is by all measures ludicrous. As Linda Darling-Hammond points out in her contribution to the incisive essay collection Many Children Left Behind, "...there is the fundamental problem that it is impossible to attain 100 percent proficiency for students on norm-referenced tests (when 50 percent of students by definition must score below the norm and some proportion must score below any cut point selected)..." Did the people writing and voting for NCLB somehow miss that in their own proficient math?

There are many problems with mandating standardized test proficiency beyond its inherent impossibility of being achieved. English Language Learners and special education students are forced into the culture of high-stakes testing, and their scores affect judgments of their school, a practice that may rate as cruel and absurd. (I'll write more about this in a future post.) The tests can tear down much of the confidence and positive associations with school and learning that teachers have painstakingly worked to build in students with Individualized Education Plans.

So much money and attention is funneled into measuring students and not nearly enough is spent on actually helping them. Many kids in mainstream classes don't get the individualized support during the school day that they need to succeed academically on their standardized test - or in a meaningful way. During the year I taught fourth grade in the Bronx (2003-2004), only six of my twenty-five students received a period of small-group tutoring during the school day. The tutoring sessions focused entirely on multiple-choice test-taking strategies and were available for just the four months preceding the English Language Arts Test. When I requested to add a new student, Marvin, to the tutoring group, Marvin was refused because his skills were too low and the tutors could only work with children who they felt had a chance of passing the test. Not surprisingly, Marvin often became frustrated in the mainstream classroom and acted out, disrupting the class regularly. The school had given up on him and he seemed to follow suit.

High-stakes standardized testing does not legitimately measure a student's higher-order thinking skills or creativity. In addition, the authenticity of students' performance on the standardized tests--particularly in the inner-city, where schools may sink or swim on test scores--is contaminated by the pressure-laden manner in which they are delivered to the students. I witnessed a stressed-out teacher tell frustrated students who were acting out during a test prep lesson, "These test score scores go on your permanent record, which will follow you for the rest of your life!" In a friend's classroom in the Bronx, a third-grade boy was so nervous during a testing session that he vomited on his test packet as well as the tests of three children near him. After a brief pause to bag the soiled test packets, the class was forced to continue filling multiple-choice bubbles.

Standardized test scores can hold massive, if not total, sway over a child's promotion to the next grade. I believe that the common practice of holding a child back because of a low test score, and then failing to provide him/her with support services the second time around, is insane. For kids walking the precarious path of growing up in the inner-city, this mean-spirited, forsaking treatment from one's school is a compelling reason to drop out.

President Bush and his supporters would label my skepticism of high-stakes testing as "the soft bigotry of low expectations."

I don't know what Bush means when he talks about expectations. I expect students to leave the classroom each day with an enriched thirst for learning, the energy to seek out and pursue their interests, and the skills to interact critically with concepts of citizenship, community, and interdependence. I expect them to have built their literacy and logic skills. I expect them to fail, consider that failure meaningfully, and then work (with support) to overcome it. And I expect us to have some fun while taking this journey together.

What I don't expect is that they will pass every standardized test they see.

My expectations would be laughable to the U.S. Department of Education. Under No Child Left Behind, as it stands, the only expectations that matter can be numbered.

CLARIFICATION FROM A PREVIOUS POST: There have been many changes in personnel, programs, and atmosphere in the three years since I taught at P.S. 85. For example, all students now receive art and music classes. A good friend of mine is the full-time dance teacher, providing the kids a crucial active and creative outlet. The teachers in schools like P.S. 85 are on the ground, devoting their lives to educating and helping children. America and its government need to recognize and honor the talents and dedication of these individuals with legislation that treats schools like human institutions, not testing factories.

In the comments on a prior post, someone inquired about how to help students immediately. For anyone who would like to provide an inner-city classroom with valuable assistance on special projects, I recommend the site donorschoose.org. Teachers around the country list their grant requests and prospective donors have their pick.