Recently, it seems like just when there is no news about cheating in Atlanta Public Schools, a new incident takes place. Frankly, I am tired of it. Not of the cheating, but of the incessant, irrelevant standardized testing that has plagued my school system for years.
It seems like teachers are always blamed for evading the testing rules, but I am shocked that nobody has fully realized that it isn’t entirely their fault. Poorly thought out, excessive testing and the assessment of teachers may have pushed teachers like physical education teacher Harlen Graham and science teacher David Olorunfemi over the edge
During my freshman year, I had Graham, who resigned this year after being accused of giving students answers for Student Learning Objectives tests. Gym is a class that most people grudgingly slog through, and his treatment of the class as more than simply a graduation requirement is admirable. Do I agree with his decision to alter SLO grades? No. Do I understand his motivation? Absolutely.
The first year that SLOs were implemented, many of my teachers who administered the tests didn’t take them seriously. However, the following year, I noticed a shift in SLO administration. There were specific days that tests were to be taken and turned in, and there were more than enough announcements hounding teachers to get their grades in. Teachers’ attitudes toward the tests shifted too; their dislike of the SLOs shifted from, “It’s just another test I have to administer,” to, “It has incredibly high implications.”
One major problem with the SLOs is the difference in stakes for the parties involved. Students rarely care how they perform. To teachers, however, SLOs do matter. They make up half of their evaluations. The sheer notion of the SLOs also confuses me. For example, this year I am taking Advanced Drama. I took this class in my sophomore year, and I have been performing and studying theater both inside and outside of Grady throughout high school. I got a 92 percent on the SLO. While I am proud of the score, I realized that my high marks do not benefit anyone. If I get a better score on the post-SLO, the improvement will not be large, so it will appear that I barely improved during the year. If I receive the same score, it will “mean” that I did not grow in the subject area. If I perform worse on the post-SLO — even by one question — it will imply my understanding of the material decreased and will reflect badly on the teacher.
There are plenty of intelligent students who don’t test well on multiple choice exams. Tell them to write an essay, and they would get top marks. Give them a 50-question multiple choice test, and their results could appear completely different.
I will admit that I have had less than stellar teachers. Everybody has. I have thought to myself many times, “If only the administrators could see what we do in class.” When they do sit in on classes, the vibe in the room changes. I have witnessed teachers — both good and bad — do everything from dressing differently to rearranging the desks to changing lesson plans. I have heard remarks like, “I’m being assessed today, so please try to participate and pay attention.”
I am not saying that we make students record classes, but we might need to head in that direction when coming up with an ad- equate way to assess teachers. Self-assessments are obviously biased, and tests given to students are riddled with loopholes and exemptions. A Southerner article published last school year found that approximately 20 percent of instructional days are lost to standardized testing. If administrators want to assess how well teachers do their jobs, they need to give them time to teach the material. The test teachers should take is a test on how much their students’ education means to them.
