Community Corner

Don't Keep Students in a 'Bubble,' Chester Mom Says

Letter to the Editor: More than testing needed to gauge knowledge of today's children.

I am a mother of twin kindergartners. I am also a teacher-educator who cares deeply about teaching and learning. And I am afraid. I am afraid of the day that my children bring home a worksheet with the words "Test Prep" on it. I am afraid that my dual roles as parent and educator will battle, and I will end up making the wrong decision. I am afraid that any decision I make in that instance will be wrong.

This past week some friends who live in another town tackled their first kindergarten homework. The homework focused on a Common Core Standard related to counting and numbers. Atop the page were the words "Test Prep." The kindergartners received this worksheet for homework on their sixth day of school.

I won't even go into the fact that a host of adults (me included) could not decipher the instructions for this worksheet. The fact that kindergartners who have not even experienced a week of school are subjected to test prep scares me. This is the result of policies that have been supported by individuals who do not understand teaching and learning.  It is the result of educators being disrespected, silenced by those who think they know better.

One of my former students is currently teaching in Chicago. He, along with 90% of his colleagues, authorized a strike that has sent ripples throughout the education community and waves in the political media.  The district leaders cry that the teachers are hurting the students over issues of pay and benefits. However, most teachers in the strike believe the fight is deeper than what they take home.  In the words of my former student, who is now my colleague, "We are fighting for the ability to help kids explore the world rather than bubble it in [on a test]."  

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Chicago teachers are standing against excessive testing, incomplete evaluation systems, and an environment where the art of teaching, which includes attention to the individual difference of children, is not valued.

In a recent podcast by Back Story called School Days: A History of Public Education. The American History Guys chronicled the origins of America's free and public education; they traced its development; and, perhaps most interestingly, they provided evidence that teachers (and schools) have served as scapegoats on more than one occasion throughout our past.  They suggest that the current climate of political oversight in education may be akin to the era of space race—where schools became the primary target of blame for the U.S. falling behind Russia.  At that time, popular opinion, fueled by political debates, believed that public schools needed to better prepare scientists and engineers who could compete globally.  

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Today public outcry similarly focuses on the failure of public schools to prepare the next generation of Americans.  The podcast guys mentioned statistics about the low standing of US students on comparative international exams.  What they didn't say—and what few people explain—is that when variables related to poverty are controlled, the US scores at the top of the pack in literacy. (See U.S. Department of Education report, for example.)  Though socioeconomic status does not account for students’ achievement on all international tests, neither does a failing state of public education. The U.S. has educators who know a lot about teaching and learning, and we have a lot of wonderful teachers who care about students.  

Can testing help us to uncover what students know and how we can help them?  Absolutely.  Will testing itself make kids smarter?  Absolutely not.  Relying solely on test scores to rate students, to evaluate teaching, and to make decisions about local needs of schools will not make public schools better.  Over-testing will only serve to reduce teaching and learning to the test itself.  In some cases, it encourages cheating and lying, and these are certainly not values that we want our education system to promote.

I spend much of my professional time arguing that "teaching to the test" is not what teaching and learning is about.  In one article I argue that it is a "Fear of Failure" that drives administrators and teachers to focus on the test.  After seeing the homework that was given to a local kindergartner, I realize that it is this fear of failing that will increase my angst about being a parent of school aged children.

I know in my heart that a worksheet for "test prep," where they are bubbling in answers to inauthentic problems, will not truly help my own children learn, but I also understand why teachers feel pressure to teach to the test.  They are evaluated on the end-scores of the children in their classes, regardless of where each individual child enters or the growth each child makes.

During the first week of school, I encouraged my twins, who are in the same kindergarten class, to make new friends.  I asked each day “Who did you play with?”  Each day my son said, "We don't have time to play."  Each morning he cried, "I don't want to go to school.  I can't do anything I want to do."  I listened, growing increasingly worried about his immediate dislike for school.  I was hoping to get to adolescence before the cries to stay home began.  I also was skeptical about his claim that they didn't have time to play during the 6 hours they spend in school.  

However, in our first class of the semester, one of my graduate-level students, himself a kindergarten teacher, shared his reason for entering a doctoral program.  He wants to study "play" in kindergarten.  Many theories of learning support the concept that play, especially in young children, is important to academic, social, and emotional development.

His experience as a kindergarten teacher has led him to believe that the culture of high stakes testing has pushed more and more "academic" work into kindergarten, leaving less and less time for creative play.  As my graduate student explained his research goals, I thought of my son's morning moan - that he didn't have time to do anything that he wanted to do.  Perhaps he is right.  And that scares me too.

As I shared the story of the “test prep” worksheet with a colleague, she asked me, "So are you attaching a 'dear teacher' letter in response?"  I do not know what choice I will make when my children bring home a worksheet for "test prep."  I do not know what the right choice would be.

I do know that my profession matters and that the teachers in Chicago are leading a good fight—one that is standing up against a culture of high stakes testing, which, ultimately, has little to do with teaching and learning.  

I can only hope that as time goes on, my kids find more time to play creatively both in and out of school—and that school helps them to explore the world, rather than simply to “bubble it in.”

Kristen Hawley Turner, PhD
Fordham University Graduate School of Education
Chester resident


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