Standardized test rebellion

“The further removed from the child anyone is, the more difficult to know what kind of student they are,” said the first teacher. “Classroom teachers, support personnel, even the administration in a building has a better handle than what a composite test score can say. If I give a test in class, it might not be a true reflection of what a child knows, but I can give that consideration because I know this student and I can give them an opportunity to articulate their answers another way or to meet and discuss what it is they actually know. The further removed we get, the more challenging that is. We try to instill in the kids to be problem-solvers and thinkers and to use resources around them, and then we get to a testing situation where everything has to be based on what they can retain in their heads and what can come out of their pencil. And that’s frustrating.”

It’s a concern shared by Katie Cokinos, a Cahill Elementary parent.

“I loved school, I loved my teachers, I loved learning, but when it came down to filling in little holes I couldn’t function,” Cokinos said. “I really feel for kids who don’t operate under those stressful situations. It doesn’t feel like we’re building students. It feels like we’re building testers.”

Educators evaluated

In Saugerties and across the state, teachers and principals in public schools are being scrutinized under a new Annual Professional Performance Review (APPR) that is, in part, determined by results of standardized tests given most commonly to all students between third and eighth grade in April. Until a few years ago, standardized testing was primarily given only to students in the fourth and eighth grades. The federal Race to the Top initiative, introduced nearly four years ago, also connects some of a district’s funding to mandatory standardized testing. For cash-strapped districts like Saugerties, that can potentially be significant.

The same teacher expressed another concern unlikely to be addressed with the new approach to standardized testing: With so much focus placed on test results in an APPR, she said the possibility exists that some students could deliberately fail a test if they didn’t like their teacher.

“We had a fifth grader who was able to verbalize, ‘So if I don’t do well on this test, my teacher could get fired?’” said the second teacher. “These kids know this. You could have a coup. You get personality conflicts, and kids get together and they say, ‘Let’s bomb it; it’s not going to change my life. It’s one state test, but what it could do is get rid of somebody.’ That’s a reality. It’s a reality for teachers and kids have a lot of power in that regard. And if people think they’re not that mindful, they’ve never been in a seventh or eighth grade classroom.”

Tests are improving, says BOCES sup

According to Dr. Charles Khoury, Ulster BOCES’ district superintendent, some of the local concerns are being addressed at the state level. He cited new “core curriculum-based testing.”

“It’s more student-centered, more hands-on, more problem-solving,” Khoury said. “It’s usable knowledge as opposed to something more sterile. Kids for decades have asked, ‘When am I going to use this stuff?’ What the core curriculum content forces teachers to do is make the learning more relevant to the lives our kids are living today, and the lives we’re projecting they will live in their future and not our future.”

Khoury said comparing the results of this coming year’s tests to those of the past would be difficult and results are initially expected to fall. “The key message is that these are tests that are not testing the same domain of knowledge. They’re higher-level thinking skills, and essentially to compare this year’s results to last year’s results would be apples and oranges.”

Other changes involve testing technology: next year, mandatory computer-based tests will allow for almost instantaneous turnaround and provide educators a wealth of analytics to diagnose problem areas for individual students.

For Saugerties, this mandate could come at a price.

“I don’t know how districts can afford to do it,” said the second teacher. “We have to have WiFi in the district by 2014-15. Everybody has to take the standardized test at the same time on the computer. If your grade level has 90 students, you have to have 90 computers available for them to all sit down and take the test at the same time. And we have got schools that have 24 computers.”