We are having a blizzard and the city has declared a state of emergency. No one is to be out on the streets unless it’s dire. That includes school buses. This is a set-back for our Superintendent of schools who declared schools would stay open this year despite the weather. Kids need to be there every scheduled day to prepare for the standardized tests.  Maybe Mother Nature overheard and wanted to show who’s really in charge. Or maybe She decided the kids need a break.

I work for a regional arts council and advocate for the arts in school. That means I’m on education improvement committees. The only thing talked about is raising test scores. Someday I am going to frighten everyone and jump on the table, tear up the agenda and yell "SHUT UP!!!" I don't curse much, even in fantasies. But this time it might come out. And it would be years worth of stifled swearing. If I thought it would change things I'd do it now. But the only thing that would happen is they’d stop inviting me to the meetings. I'm not ready to give up yet so I attend and share ideas which are ignored.

I'm not against testing. You need to know if students are learning and what they don't understand so you can find another way to reach them. But standardized tests don’t do that well. You wait for months to learn the results. They only tell you the scores. They don’t tell you how or why the student came up with the answer on that day.

Years ago I attended a lecture by Dr. Howard Gardner, a professor from Harvard. He presented his theory of multiple intelligences derived from an extensive research project to define intelligence and learn how humans learned. What he said excited, thrilled and saddened me.

Gardner defined intelligence as the ability to survive and thrive in your environment. He cited examples from his field work. He once visited a Pacific Island where fishing was the basis of their economy. He went out for a day with fishermen. They used dug-out canoes and traveled for hours far from the island and any landmarks.  They found schools of fish, captured what was needed, returned pregnant females and young males, then made their way back in the dark by detecting ocean currents through their feet. In this society Dr. Gardner was a total idiot.

Dr. Gardner shared the dirty secret about standardized tests and IQ scores. They test the lowest and most insignificant portion of our intelligence. To make the scoring manageable there are right and wrong answers. They cannot take into account the student’s life experience and reasoning ability or to test for the most sophisticated and vital part of intelligence: how to take divergent ideas and create something new. It is humanity’s ability to create and adapt that has allowed us to survive so far.

I once administered assessment tests based on Jean Piaget’s cognitive development theory that there are four essential stages of  human brain development. I sat with one child at a time to ask the questions and how they came up with the answer. They might give a good answer but faulty reasoning. Or the opposite. 

For one test I had a ball of clay. I showed the ball and then flattened it with my hand. The question was: Was there more clay when it was in the shape of a ball, or when it was flat, or is the amount of clay the same? At one stage of development the child is likely to say one of the shapes has more clay. At a more sophisticated stage they understand mass remains the same regardless of shape. I asked a boy the question and his answer was the ball had more. He said there were molecules we couldn’t see that stuck to my hand when I flattened it.

A pre-school assessment showed a picture of a toothbrush. The child was to draw a line to where the toothbrush belonged. There were pictures of a bathroom sink, a bed, a toy box and a refrigerator. A little girl drew a line to the refrigerator. When asked why she said “Mama keeps them in there so the cockroaches don’t get them.”

I wouldn’t mind standardized tests if we didn’t care about them so much. In grade school I loved them. Testing days were like a vacation. We got extra long recesses and no homework for a week. The teacher may have prepared us for them but I really can't remember and I have a good memory. I do remember the teacher saying to not worry about it. And do our best.

The test results were on my permanent record. I discovered that in high school when my counselor asked what happened to me in 1962. My scores had plummeted. That was the year I created designs on the answer sheet rather than read the questions. We laughed about it. No one laughs about things like that now.

Our schools display banners with achievement percentage goals. Some schools have achievement score pep rallies. They want to give kids a daily reminder the goal is for 85% to meet or exceed grade level. The flip side: 15% are expected to fail.

My agency runs an after-school program at one of the grade schools. The children receive targeted tutoring to increase their academic skills along with arts enhanced lessons to entice attendance.  Teachers refer children who scored a few percentage points below grade level. It’s been shown the extra help boosts their scores enough to be statistically successful. They do not refer children who are far below grade level because no one expects them to reach the score needed no matter what is done. “It would take a miracle.” But I’ve seen miracles.

I once considered becoming a teacher and took a job a teacher’s aide to try it out. After a year I got serious and took a graduate level course on education methods. The instructor was inspiring and gave examples of how to create an engaging learning environment. He shared studies done on the impact of teacher expectations. Students with C or lower grades were placed into a classroom and the teacher was told these were exceptionally bright students. By the end of the school year they were performing above grade level. This research experiment had been repeated numerous times with the same result. My instructor made it a personal policy to not review his student’s records and not eat lunch in the teacher gossip lounge.

At my school I was assigned a reading group of 3^rd graders who were barely reading. This was not a good idea. I had no training in remedial reading and didn't know how to help them. The teacher in charge assured me it didn’t matter. The students were hopeless. I decided to try the expectation experiment and use my theater experience. I pretended they were high achievers.

The first day I told them it was an honor to teach the smartest kids in third grade. They told me I was wrong. They were the dumbest. “Well, that’s not what I head.” I pulled out the reading materials and they groaned. They had done these for two years and hated them. We made a deal. We’d get through these quick and at the end of every class we’d do fun things. I used game ideas from my education class, got books from the library that were fun to read, acted out stories, and instituted a hug/kiss reward system. For every success or attempt at something challenging they received a hug or an elephant kiss. For an elephant kiss my arm morphed into a trunk and my hand squeezed the top of the kid’s head. All the kids helped make the sound of a kiss.

At the end of the year they took the standardized reading test and every kid meet grade level. A few exceeded it. I was thrilled but the teacher in charge was not. She thought I helped them. She gave me the benefit of the doubt and said maybe it was unconscious.  She'd give them a different version of the test without me in the room. I told the kids what happened. “You know you did this without my help. Now show them.”  They did even better.

One teacher asked what I had done. The rest ignored me and the teacher in charge was angry. So was I. It wasn’t that I wanted praise. I just wanted them to understand what was possible if they changed their expectations.  I was disheartened and exasperated and decided against teaching. It was the cowardly thing to do. I have many friends and a brother who were more courageous. I’ve admired their tenacity and determination to do what is right regardless of the bureaucratic insanities. They used to nod at staff meetings and then close their doors and teach in a way they knew worked. Now they can’t do that.

An amazing teacher, who once spent hours writing personal notes to children and parents and used her own money for books and educational games, was cited for having materials in her room that did not conform to standard curriculum. Standard curriculum had been designed to improve test scores.  She removed all the fun, interesting extras and is taking an early retirement. She feels bad for abandoning her kids but the stress affected her health.

I’m at a loss for what it will take to turn this entrenched decayed system around. It will take a miracle…like 40 days and 40 nights of blizzards. That might force us to rethink everything.   

Words © 2011 by Sharon Nesbit-Davis