21st Century School Teacher

It’s that time of year again: the time of year when teachers across America start sweating it, anxious because soon they will see how their students fared on last year’s state exams.  The time of year when teachers remember their students as standardized test scores… And the scores are coming in, whether we like them or not…  While I was thinking about this today, I remembered that the public school advocacy group Center on Education Policy released a new report earlier this summer,” Has Student Achievement Increased Since 2002?”  The report confirms achievement has increased, but this report fails to reference trends measured in the PISA or the PIRLS international tests--that both show a U.S. decline in every subject since they began testing in 2000.  What is really happening to education in America? 

It’s hard to get the facts straight; there are many scores to tabulate and variables to correlate—has No Child Left Behind helped to deliver a significant gain in student achievement, or the opposite, as some suggest--actually slowed student achievement since that law’s passage?  It’s difficult to speculate on such a complicated issue, but I’d like to weigh in…

IMHO I believe that teachers carry NCLB legislation like an albatross around their necks… They are busier than ever before.  Why?  Because they are trying to balance teaching-to-the-test and teaching to enrich students’ lives.  And add to that, teachers are also working to incorporate 21st century skills into their curricula. Teachers know that the curricula is not complete for 21st century learners, and the tests that states have spent years designing to measure sets of standards don’t even address many of the skills that will be needed when students move into the real landscape of our global world…

It’s time for bold moves in education… It's also time to look students in the eyes and acknowledge their patience… (That’s my lead in to a great video posted on Youtube and Classrooms 2.0  ;)  -where I first watched it…)

Recent publication College Board to debut an 8th-grade PSAT exam by Gale Holland, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer says a new middle school exam is expected to be released as early as 2010.  Apparently it seeks to identify talented students, so that students can be moved in college-prep classes early.  Is that really necessary?  Aren’t students tested enough already?

The College Board says that the exam would be voluntary; however, we all know that the pressure would be on for college bound students to add this exam to their growing test repertoire.

What do I think?  I am certainly against more testing for our students, but I also think that it’s wise to consider the objective of taking this kind of test versus the state mandated annual exams required by No Child Left Behind.  

IMHO it’s crazy to test students year-in-year-out…  Really, what’s the point?  We should be identifying students early that need intervention or remediation, and there should be a series of check points along the way, but to administer standardized tests in 3rd grade, 4th grade, and 5th grade—don’t forget 6th grade, 7th grade, 8th grade, and a few more testing in 9th grade, 10th grade and 11th—well my question is why aren’t the tax payers up in arms over the cost of administering and scoring these repetitive exams.  How much of the state budget is going to these testing agencies instead of our schools?  Are they even improving student learning in a significant way?  Many argue that when teachers teach to the state mandated tests, which they do, there is an artificial increase in test scores—explaining the upward trend in academic progress.  The state tests are purely summative; teachers aren’t given copies of the exam to personalize learning… The tests are simply a snap-shot report card for our schools?  

It is also pertinent to ask if this is just a revenue building tactic. "It's a brilliant marketing ploy, but it's pure Pablum," Paul Kanarek, head of the Princeton Review test prep service in Southern California, said of the College Board's pitch for the eighth-grade exam. "They're locked in a death match with ACT over who takes the ACT or the SAT. Once you buy into a certain product line, you're likely to stick with it." I might agree with this argument…

And if the exam’s results would not be used for college admittance, what’s the point anyways? 

Okay, the reason why I am in favor of this exam is because I have worked with 7th and 8th graders for nearly a decade.  I have worked with the gifted and talented, and I can tell you, many students that should be identified “college-track” are slipping through the cracks.  We spend a large portion of our budgets on identification and remediation of kids that fall on the low end of the curve—but what about our top performing students?  What about the kids that should be identified, but because they lack good seat-work skills, or they’re bored to tears in class and have given up, what about identifying these kids as college-worthy?  I say that even though kids are tested far too much, this new exam has merit.  I want to see that the gifted students that could be shaping our future world, that they are given opportunities, too.

It’s time to give students that otherwise might miss out on the college-track classes because of income barriers, language barriers, or teacher ignorance… it’s time to see that they have a way to demonstrate their ability and be given the opportunity for a seat in the honors and college-prep classes.