What do standardized tests really mean? What is their purpose? Why are they necessary? Every educator has witnessed the decline in the rigor of education over the last 30 years. Do you remember a point in your own education where you stayed up all night studying for a test, creating flashcards, making notes, reading the textbook, and collaborating with peers in cram sessions? Do you think students do these same things today? Are they even willing?  The only hints our teachers used to give us were "Read the chapter." I remember once sitting down to read a whole chapter of my Intro to Biology textbook that weighed 15 pounds. I highlighted, I took notes from it, I did the questions at the end of the chapter. I went to the library. Now, students want a video summary of the chapter, so that they don't have to read.


Where are the places that our students live, that allow them the time to focus on studying? In stable households, where a child can devote time and energy to studying. These are generally middle or upper-class households. I was successful in high school and college because I had two working parents who could provide a stable house, a car, utilities, a desk to study at, and the materials I needed. I wasn’t hungry or malnourished, as are many children living in poverty. I wasn’t distracted by siblings screaming and fighting in the background, by a child of my own, or by parents who were in desperate need of money, or they’d lose the family home. Both of my parents were college-educated, and could help me with my homework, and suggest ways to study. Many students these days are not as lucky as I was, but should we not even TRY to educate them in a rigorous fashion? Many teachers have to deal with IEPs, home life problems, gang problems, poverty problems - they feel like they have to prioritize keeping their students alive, and not teaching. And that makes me sad.


As it became required that every student be given a chance at a high school education, some teachers may have become more lax so that students "like them." "Popular teacher, and "hard teacher" aren't words students often mutter together. Many teachers teach things that their students enjoyed, instead of covering the entire curriculum. They began offering study sheets, which helped the students get better scores on their teacher-generated tests. The teacher-generated tests showed no consistency between teachers in the same schools, in the district, or in the state. You knew which teachers had easier tests or were more fun, and you clamored to get that teacher. Teachers found they enjoyed teaching so much more when they didn’t have students complaining about how hard their tests were, so they might have told students what exactly was going to be on the test, allowed an open book test, or even allowed students to take group tests. Is a "good teacher" the one parents and students like, or the one who completely teaches the discipline? I'd like to argue that teachers should be both. Both rigorous, and kind. Both thorough, and thoughtful. Both challenging, and fair. I believe all teachers can meet the objectives of Common Core, while keeping their creative flair.

Teachers, like Jim, who was first mentioned, wish they had a cheat sheet for the test. But in essence, they do. They have the standards. What is going to be on the test is thoroughly outlined. Teachers are free to teach their discipline to the best of their abilities, with their own creative flair, as long as they meet or exceed the bare minimum that Common Core requires. The reason Common Core emerged was because there was no consistency in education across America. Good teachers were frustrated with their students, and began dumbing-down the curriculum. Good students were frustrated by their home lives, peer interactions, and hormones, and put less and less energy into their studies.


Standardized testing points out the gaps in educational quality. Just as a doctor does a blood panel during your yearly physical, and then knows where your levels are at, standardized tests tell us what level our students are at, compared to other students across the country. As Elizabeth points out, “yet we’re not allowed to point out what the problems were,” teachers KNOW where the problems are. We know that students come to our classes unprepared from previous grade levels. We know students transfer from other districts, where they received inadequate teaching. We know students are passed on to the next grade, “because they are sweet,” and not because they are smart. Social promotions are part of the problem - letting a child pass on to the next grade level, even if they didn’t master the concepts, because it seems cruel to hold them back.


I would like to challenge every teacher - Instead of spending your precious teacher-energy complaining about the tests, every teacher in every school should vow to spend all their energy helping these kids pass (as many already do). They should research each lesson in their lesson plan and make it better, by identifying the standard it is meant to teach, and increasing the rigor of their lessons (Make one of your lessons better TODAY. Then, make one better tomorrow. Then one the next day…). They can spend their time helping the entire class, instead of leaving the class sitting and waiting, while the teacher attends to one problem student. Teachers can flip their class, so students can watch lectures at home, and teachers help the students through activities or projects during school. And, teachers can turn to experts to help them make more valuable lessons, deal with students in a way that encourages growth and success, and improve themselves as teachers by reading sites such as edutopia and The Teaching Channel.


I witness so much energy wasted, complaining about the tests. I observe teachers getting burnt out. I feel these students being anxious and frustrated. I see parents angry at the schools. And I see a way to fix this. I worked with The UT Austin. Charles A Dana Center “Professional Teaching Model (PTM).” The premise of the PTM is that teachers collaborate to look at what children should have learned in the previous grade, coming into their class. They identify what the children should learn in this grade. And finally, they assess what children will be learning the next year. Here is a worksheet, that shows how this works. This is an amazing model, because it utilizes teachers as the professionals that they are. It fosters collaboration, and constant improvement. And it accomplishes what we all want - more student success.


If every teacher in every school improved one of their lessons every six weeks, instead of hating the standards, can you imagine the leaps and bounds education would take forward? 

***Original posting to Facebook, but since I went into such detail, I figured I'd post it here, with a few more details


This article is in response to an article in the Washington Post entitled "Your kid is being bullied at school - and not in the way you think." The basic premise is that your kid is being bullied into taking standardized tests, because teachers shouldn't be judged by standardized tests. (First, I will admit to being irked by the use of the word "bully" here. If your kid is being bullied, that implies he is being hurt. Your child is not being hurt by standardized tests. If anything, he's being hurt by sub-standard teaching) People have complained about tests since the beginning of tests themselves. Math test hard? Complain about the math test. Writing essays for English make you stressed? Complain about English. Can't remember how to translate a verb? Complain about foreign language. And when someone doesn't pass a test - OF COURSE, it is the test's fault. Note that we never hear complaining by people who are successful at tests.

I've taken, made up, and given tests to just about every level of student. I used to date a guy who taught at a different college than the one I teach at. He didn't get any "course pack" (with pre-made tests) with his textbook, so he used to make all his own tests. They were these essay questions, that sometimes I couldn't figure out what he was asking for. He asked odd, rambling questions, that were difficult to figure out. He asked true and false questions that could have been true or false, depending on how much you knew about biology. He asked fill in the blank questions that he later couldn't answer himself.

His students' answers were terrible. The answers proved the kids couldn't read or write. I used to help him grade, and I would take a stack, and he would take a stack. At first I would laugh about some of the terrible answers. I would be shocked at the poor spelling and grammar. I would be confused. I would be amazed at how the answers showed how little his students knew about anything, much less biology. By the end, I would be in despair and depressed.

At the end, the stack I graded were all F's. The students's answers were wrong. There was so much red, I was horrified.The stack he graded? Everyone got a B or A. He just felt bad for them, and wanted to take into account that they were having a rough day, didn't write well, couldn't spell, or just put the wrong word "by mistake" (because he knew what they meant).

I get it that people see the bad in standardized tests, because they want to focus on the bad. I believe, however, that standardized tests give us real information, and diagnose a huge problem in education these days. Instead of believing students or teachers are the problem, I think it's the fault of people who complain about tests. We are being given the opportunity to learn where the system is broken, and told how to fix it.

If teachers spent half the time learning to collaborate and make the education of their students better, instead of wasting energy and taking the easy way out and giving up, they could fix entire districts. We did it in the one I taught at. Not one of the people in my department EVER said, "This test isn't fair! Let's write about how bad this is!" We said, "If we work together to teach the best, do the best labs, give the best assignments, tutor kids, and prepare them, we'll get more to pass!" And voila - Our passing rates shot up by over 50%. We went from a 38% passing rate, to a 89% passing rate.

If people - students, parents, admin, teachers, and professors - quit complaining, and worked at passing, we couldn't stop the leaps and bounds our educational quality would take. But we all know that won't happen, because some people refuse to take tests as what they are - indications that something has or hasn't been learned. Test bashing is easier than admitting failure. Test bashing is here to stay. And with the advent of social media, people who want to believe testing is all bad, find the verification that is invented to justify their feelings. Just like those who believe vaccines are evil - only believe what verifies "what you already know." I find test bashing to be such a waste of precious energy on the part of students, teacher, parents, and the schools.

Income Inequality seems to be on the tip of everyone’s tongue lately. President Obama spoke about it in his State of The Union Address on January 28th. He described how the middle and lower classes have stalled in their wage potential, and the possibility of getting by, much less getting ahead, seems to have lessened. Also in the news is the plight of adjuncts – those part-time college instructors who teach one or two classes at a university for a small sum and no benefits. This morning, adjuncts at my university were described in an NPR story, “Part-time Professors Demand Higher Pay; Will Colleges Listen?” The story goes on to describe how “professional adjuncts” – those workers who hold a graduate degree in their field, and who teach as needed at one or several higher education institutions, as their full time job – are essentially making minimum wage, or less. The plight of professional adjuncts is often a sad tale – often we read about how they struggle to make ends meet, selling plasma on the side to supplement their income, Margaret Mary Vojtko who died destitute at the age of 83 as she taught French for 25 years as an adjunct at Duquesne University, to this self-proclaimed “adjunct whore” who describes herself as doing tricks each semester to make ends meet. The horror stories abound. But how did these horror stories come to fruition?

I must first divulge my own experiences as an adjunct. I enjoyed my position as a non-major, adjunct biology instructor for 6 semesters at my university. I taught large, stadium-style lectures for classes of 100 to over 300 students each semester. I enjoyed working with these students, even though there were a lot of them, as they worked through the general education requirements of their degree plan. I spent three contact hours a week – either two classes of an hour and a half every Tue/Thur, or three classes of one hour every Mon/Wed/Fri – lecturing, using classroom technology, answering questions, helping the students find videos of concepts they didn’t understand, helping students with campus problems, or just counseling students on problems I could help with, be it personal or academic. Outside of class, I had to order textbooks, sit on review committees, collaborate with other lecture professors, do grades, answer emails (and with 300 students, that’s a TON of email) and make copies. I earned less than $1000 per credit hour for the course. After taxes, for one semester, I would see $399 deposited once a month, five times, into my direct deposit bank account. Take home for one semester of work - $2000.

Now here is where I differ from the adjuncts that are often described in the depressing stories you hear about these people with advanced degrees living on welfare and food stamps – I have a full time job. I work at the university already, as a Biology lab Coordinator. 40 hours a week, I work with teaching assistants, supervise 640 lab students a semester, order supplies, write curriculum, do learning management software for the course, and keep a bustling Biology lab exciting and fun. In between writing curriculum and being a single mom who just earned a doctorate, I love to teach a class or two. Most of the classes that are offered to adjuncts are the general education, lower level courses in the 100 or 200 range. I taught the lowest level of Biology course there is offered at this university – the one taught to general education, non-majors students. I know people who adjunct who teach the freshman English classes, the non-major History courses, even Physics! I also have my name and resume in the pool at six other universities/colleges for these types of adjunct positions. I think adjuncting is fun! It allows me to do something I find enjoyable – teaching. But, there’s been no adjunct teaching positions available in my department for the last three semesters, because of grant fluctuations and course load changes for professors. Thank god for my full time job.

Adjuncting was NEVER meant to be a full time job. That is the exact reason adjuncts, who are “professional adjuncts,” are in the position they are today. Adjuncting is a part time type of position, meant for people who are professionals in other full time jobs, who essentially “pick up a shift” here or there. They are like substitutes, who are called to fill in when a full time, tenure tract faculty gets a huge grant and the department needs someone to fill in. The people who wish adjuncting was a full time profession are sadly mistaken, and I believe will continue to suffer if they keep trying to push to make adjuncting a full time job with benefits and security. Just as I feel the minimum wage employee at Walmart or McDonalds is futile in fighting for this type of job to support them and their families (these fast food jobs were meant for teenagers who needed part time work, not for someone needing to support a family) – I feel the plight of the adjunct is useless. Someone who has the basic skills to man the fryer, stock the shelves, or teach the most basic of college courses will continue to earn part time employee pay, for low-level, part-time created jobs. Adjuncting is not a career, adjuncting is the burger flipping of higher education.

Now please, don’t think I’m dissing on adjuncts. I know how hard, stressful, and overwhelming adjuncting can be as a job. When you have students taking intro courses, they can be the most needy students – the ones who may be taking your course while also taking basic math because they can’t do math, taking basic reading, because they can’t read, or just aren’t cut out for college. You may pour 30 hours a week into one course, to do the justice to your students that you feel, and I felt, they deserve. But the honest truth about adjuncting is that there is no security to it as a profession, it’s low paid work meant for people who have other full time jobs, and it’s something that I would advise ANY person who is getting a graduate degree and plans to go teach “because they love it” to stay away from. Go into secondary education and teach high school students. Find a job at a company that you can do professional development or job training. But if you get your grad degree and plan to “just go teach” instead of having a research agenda that is good enough to get you a tenure track position (and I almost guarantee you are not in that top 5% in your field who will be offered a tenure track job), then you are going to find yourself unhappy, unemployed on a whim of the finances of higher ed institutions, or forced to move somewhere you don’t want to live, working at a university no one has ever heard of. The truth of the matter is that a $80,000 a year job that you don’t have to move for, that allows you to teach a subject you love, with benefits and security, is a fantasy. 

And as long as “professional adjuncts” are offering themselves on the altar of higher education in hordes, the market for them is not going to change. Only when ALL adjuncts decide to pursue other job opportunities, that are full time, with benefits, and security, and no one wants those adjunct positions anymore, will higher ed pay more for them. Supply and demand. The brutal truth of education as a business.

Life is full of tests. To be a doctor, you take many exams through medical school. You take the MCAT to even get into med school. In fact, EVERYONE who goes to med school must pass the MCAT, and almost every US and Canadian medical school requires it. I went and clicked on one of the six topics and skills that are assessed by the test. Just the Biology section had 17 pages of outlined topics you would have had to have studied for YEARS in your undergraduate program. Even as a Biologist myself, there are some topics I would want to go back and review before I’d ever take that kind of test. I am glad that every one of my doctors has had to pass that test, and tests like it, in order to take on the responsibility of being a doctor.


If I want to get into law school, I have to take the LSAT. The LSAT is a standardized test that measures reading skills, analytical skills, and logical reasoning. This test is described as “providing a standard measure of the acquired reasoning and reading skills of law school applicants.” When a student has taken and passed the LSAT, the law school has a reasonable understanding of what this applicant is able to do - read, and reason. I am glad that every lawyer has had to take that test, in order to understand and comprehend the law, and all it's intricacies. 


What, then, do we want from the professionals that are part of our daily lives - our teachers? When I wanted to become a teacher, in Texas, I took the TExES, or the Texas Examination of Educator Standards. As I remember, there were two parts - one part about the subject matter, and one part about understanding teaching. I actually remember the day I took that test. I was living on the Mexican border, and I had to drive to San Antonio for the proctored, secure examination. There were two other teachers with me in the car for the 2 ½ hour drive - one was a teacher’s aide who had completed her coursework, and wanted to move up into a teaching role. The other was an “emergency certified” teacher, like me, except that this was his third time taking the test, and his last try before he would be let go from his teaching position. When you were on an emergency certification (I was, because I had a Biology degree, but no teaching experience. I took all the classes while teaching full time) and you had three years from when you started to pass all the classes, and take the test. If you couldn’t pass the tests, you lost your job.


I had always accepted that this was how the system worked. I was never angry that I had to pass a test. I was never mad at the test, or fearful of the tests. I knew that if I did all the practice tests, reviewed the materials, approached my professors at school about anything I was unclear of, and just took care of business, I’d pass the test. Sure, it wasn’t fun to study. It was tedious. It was boring. It got in the way of some fun stuff I wanted to do on the weekends. But, if I wanted to be a teacher, and I did, I would pass that test. I invited friends over to study. I made binders full of material about each topic, flashcards, even read my study material out loud so I could record it and play it in my car on the way into work. I knew I had it.


(Beware, this paragraph has swearing in it) At the time, I was living with a person who wanted to become a federal agent. He also had to pass a test. He went through 3 months of intense academy to learn to shoot, learn the law, learn the job, and learn Spanish. Then, he had one year from when he started working as a recruit, until he took the test, and would either pass, or get fired from his job. Our attitudes about “the test” were a million miles apart. My attitude was “If I want this job, I take this test. Obviously it’s a test I can pass, because most of my fellow teachers have passed it, so I just need to buckle down and do this.” His attitude was “I hate this f**king test! It’s so unfair that some of these guys are Hispanic, and we are both being tested the same way on if we know Spanish. It’s not fair. If you’re a native speaker, you have an advantage. And what if I’m having a bad day, and can’t shoot? What if I’m sick? What if I can’t remember a stupid little law, or mix it up? I mean, I know the laws in general, but what if they pull out an obscure law and I miss it? This whole test is bulls**t! And my job depends on it! What if I fail, and I have to go get another job? People will know I failed. F**k this, no F**K THIS!!!!”


The closer we got to his year, the more angry, aggressive, and paranoid he got. He didn’t settle in to study - he spent a lot of time bitching with the other recruits. His first topic of conversation at every meeting with another recruit would be “The test… blah.. blah… angry blah.” I noticed that several people, especially the native Spanish speakers, stopped hanging around us. He was mad all the time. He would take his weapon with him everywhere - to the grocery store, to Walmart, to friends’ houses. He treated me in an increasingly hostile manner, because I would ask him if he wanted to study together for our tests, go out to meet new friends I had at the school and their husbands, or go to the gym and exercise (he said all the walking from the job made him miserable and tired). He became known as “Amy’s angry boyfriend.” I made excuses, “He’s just upset about this test. It will pass. He’ll pass the test, and then everything will be fine.” Finally, I broke up with him three months before his test, because I couldn’t live like that. Being surrounded by hostility about the test, anger over studying, constant anxiety about failing, fearfulness about losing a job, and test-aggression was making me physically sick. It was like a disease to all those around us. It weighed on our lives, and broke us apart.


Friends, there are teachers who's attitudes are like mine, and teachers who have an attitude like my boyfriend in your child’s school, who's emotions feed into your child, who are preparing them to take their tests, and ultimately, to graduate. I actually used to be the one designated science teacher who would be assigned every student who hadn’t been able to pass their graduation exam. I worked with these students a period a day, after school, and on Saturdays. I had material for them on EVERY CONCEPT that would be on their tests. I meticulously scoured through old, released graduation tests, figured out which standard the question applied to, and then made mini-tests for my students to take on each assigned topic. I bought them all green highlighters (somewhere I read that if you liked green, you were smart, I don’t know if there is a smart color, but it sounded good) and peppermints (I read that peppermints helped you concentrate), and so any time you came to me for test prep, you got a green highlighter and a peppermint. Somewhere I read that yoga helped people de-stress and focus, so on test days, I would lead my class in yoga pre-test.


One semester I started off with 128 seniors who had failed their senior science graduation exam. I read, re-read, practiced, encouraged, cheer-leaded, and gave them tips and tricks to beating multiple choice tests. I became known as the test whisperer - I could help you pass the test. I knew everything there was to know about that damn test, and I knew how to help students pass it. That year, I got every student to pass except SIX. And I remember those six, very vividly. One girl had such negative talk, that she refused to even read the test. She marked her scantron, and then fell asleep, every time she took the test. She repeated to me often, “I’m a failure. It’s OK, I know I’m not going to graduate. I don’t care anymore.” She set herself up for failure, and no matter what I did, she refused to even try. Another girl refused to speak English. We were on the Mexican border. Even though I never taught in Spanish, I understood it, and she understood me in English, but she would never answer any question in English, no matter what I did. All her other teachers just allowed her to speak Spanish (80% of the teachers on the border are Spanish speaking also), so she refused to do anything but speak Spanish. Another boy was a gang leader, and was only at school to attempt to sell drugs. He was suspended so much that I barely got to see him. When I did have him in class, he was sulking, in a foul mood, and staring into space. He was preoccupied, and wanted nothing to do with me or the class.


Even the best of teachers can’t reach everyone. I consider myself one of the best, most professional teachers there is. I was part of an amazing group of teachers in my department who worked together the make the science experience amazing for our students. And by everything you hear on the news today about students, we should have had utter failure in our school. We had 99% Spanish speaking students. Most of our kids were on free lunch. We had gangs, drugs, students with children, and troubled students. But we all said, “there is no reason we can’t get everyone to pass the graduation tests.” And we were right. We pulled our resources, at our department meeting each week we would each bring our best lessons on a given topic, and then make a plan so that each teacher in the department did that best lesson, and then we revised it together to make it better, make rubric answer keys, make common powerpoints, find labs that worked with that lesson, and made sure it aligned to the standards. We got to be so good at it, that in three years, we went from 39% passing the graduation tests, to 89% when I left the school. We were professionals at getting kids to pass the tests.


And never would I say we “taught to the tests.” We taught everything that was ON the test, sure, but we also got to highlight the topics we loved (one teacher loved plants, and another loved evolution). The labs we did with the students were fun and hands on, and we loved that our lesson planning was a collaborative effort. We never felt alone, because we were professionals who met regularly and took each person’s strengths, and highlighted them. Some days, all the Biology teachers would meet in the lecture auditorium, and bring all their classes of students, and one of the teachers who was really good at the topic would put on an exciting production with multimedia presentations, an outline for the students to take notes, and the other teachers would be out in the “audience,” helping kids who had questions, kids who were sleeping (you all know it happens), or helping students who needed assistance. Mostly, though, these production days were looked forward to by the kids, because it was like watching a concert, with a rockstar teacher leading.


What it took to make this happen was a collaboration between our school, and the UT Charles A Dana Center at The University of Texas in Austin. We did what was called “The Professional Teaching Model.” I plan to write more about it in the future, because it was that program that helped us turn ourselves from troubled, tired teachers, to professional teachers. We were amazing. And it was HARD! But as we all know, teaching is HARD, whether you’re succeeding or failing - so why not make it successful?


And for parents, who would you rather have leading your class? Someone like me, a professional teacher, who is motivating and fun, and hitting every standard and getting your child to pass those tests? Or someone who is constantly bitching about how unfair the tests are, how they hate the standards, and how burnt out and angry they are? A teacher who feels hopeless and angry, or who works with their department and school to be part of a collaborative, professional, efficient, effective team? Who IS your kid's teacher? If you ARE a teacher, who are YOU?


There is a popular author who has a blog that I often see shared who I absolutely despise. I won’t even mention her name, but she’s an educational historian who is what I’d label as a “critical theorist.” She is critical of education, and spends all her time breaking down how bad education is, how bad teachers are treated, how bad politics affect education, how bad the common core is, how bad testing is, and basically how bad EVERYTHING is. She offers no solutions that are feasible. She makes teachers despair even more. She amplifies criticisms, finds faults in the system that she says make it hostile, and writes books to terrorize teachers, and make them afraid. She’s a s**t-stirrer, s**t-flinger, and an irresponsible, critical, worthless hack (in my opinion). And I feel sad for every teacher who climbs on board with her, ready to complain and waste their time fighting against standards. And I plan to write, teach, motivate, and educate until she goes away. I will talk louder, write more, motivate, encourage, and enable success in the profession that I LOVE. Because I believe every school district, every single school, every department, and every teacher is part of this amazing profession called EDUCATION, and that people would prefer to be lifted up, instead of held hopeless to the ground. We all got into this profession to make our lives, the lives of our students, and the education in this country get better. And I, friends, am just getting the ball rolling.


Who’s with me?