Timmy’s Cell Phone Plan (Adventures In Standardized Testing)

February 7, 2018June 4, 2023 ~ Blue Cereal

We did some practice test questions in our faculty meeting this morning.

I get it. State testing season is upon us, and while I see the many amazing things happening in my new district, our recent scores have us on the state’s “naughty” list. The pressure is seriously building for the folks with slightly nicer desks than mine to turn things around.

State tests in Indiana take over the known world beginning in February – making Oklahoma’s “end of instruction” exams (which came two months or more before the end of instruction) seem somehow reasonable in comparison. If we’re going to be devoting our energies to persuading students of the value and importance of the damn things in the weeks to come, the reasoning goes, we should have some idea of what they actually look like.

I’ve already had a taste. This year is the first year the entire process is computerized. You’ve all seen the headlines in recent years about the number of times the whole system crashes halfway through this most modern and sophisticated of Teacher Effectiveness Measuring Systems; it seemed thus prudent to test the bandwidth a bit ahead of the official charade. Perhaps more importantly, the powers-that-be wanted students to be familiar with the procedures and formatting – the endless codes to be entered and ticket numbers to be verified, the bewildering joy conveyed by the mandated script over things like the availability of on-screen highlighting tools, and the way there’s ALWAYS that one kid who simply can NOT get logged in no matter what you try, leaving the entire room in frustrated limbo.

In short, my students all hate the damn tests months ahead of time.

Now, we can talk a good game about how important these are to graduation (they have to pass a certain number to get out of here with a decent flavor of diploma), but if my kids were long-term planners, they wouldn’t wait until the weekend after major projects are due to begin ignoring half of the instructions and doing them completely wrong. Insisting they be patient and maintain diligent enthusiasm over the opportunity to theoretically “demonstrate what they know” while I walk around trying to figure out why Enrique’s Passcode Verification Edu-Cipher keeps opening up the AP Latin Online Exam instead of High School Algebra is simply not persuasive.

After the first 15 minutes, I don’t really believe it myself.

In any case, teachers were given a sample math problem to solve this morning. Math teachers circulated to offer assistance after watch for shenanigans. My table was confronted with a serious dilemma on behalf of a fictional Timmy. Should he go with the cell phone plan that charges a monthly fee and then a small amount per text, or the plan with no monthly fee and a slightly higher amount per text? How many texts a month would make the first plan more advantageous?

Let’s set aside that cell phone plans don’t really work that way anymore; it’s a clear effort to take math and use it in a real world setting, even if that real world was in 2003.

For non-math people, we did rather well. We took the monthly fee of the first plan and divided it by the difference between per-text charges in the two. The answer was a nice round number – 300, I believe – and thus the number of texts at which the plans would cost the same. More texts than that and he should go with the monthly fee plan; fewer and he should stick with the higher per-text cost.

Look at us go! Real world math with a few scribbles on scratch paper! It took a few minutes to sort through the logistics, but we win at state testing.

Only we didn’t.

Our answer was correct, but we’d skipped the required step of writing out the equation necessary to work the problem. That’s what would be graded by the Electronic Masters. Did we know how to assign variables, and isolate ‘x’, and which rules applied, and all that?

Um… no, but we solved the problem. Not only that, we UNDERSTOOD our solution. Still, I suppose I could see some benefit to the expectation that students be able to translate that into the appropriate “language”…

Even that wasn’t enough, however. The real secret to success, once the problem was actually solved, was knowing how to use the on-screen tools and required answering box to enter the right symbols in the right order and leave the proper number of spaces in order to meet some pre-determined but loosely defined concept of what “showing your work” might actually look like to a minimum wage worker in Idaho looking at a key on a laminated sheet of some sort.

In other words, we failed high school math because we only knew how to use it to solve real-world problems, not how to make the test happy.

In my naivete, I thought the biggest challenge in math was still getting kids PAST the equations and into understanding how that math can actually be used. I thought the goal was to figure out how many tiles Savannah needs for her outdoor swimming pool, or the price point at which Carlos can afford fancy coffee once a week and still pay his rent. But it seems that’s not the goal at all.

The goal is to serve the machines. To nurture even deeper cynicism on the part of my kids about the actual point or value of even being her to begin with. To further bind their sense of identity and worth to their ability to game a rubric.

And I thought my internal tension over the time I spend focused on AP Exams was stressful; these poor math teachers! They love their subject – they’re really good at it – and they see the value, the fun, the joy, the depth! But if they’re going to qualify for those merit bonuses – or in some cases, keep their jobs at all – it has to all boil down to making the machines happy by pummeling their students into compliance.

Oh, and don’t forget to help the students remain relaxed and model some enthusiasm about taking the tests to begin with, of course.

It doesn’t help that behind my “still new here don’t make trouble still new here don’t make trouble” smile, I’m pretty sure the whole process is just another excuse to condemn public schools and undercut whatever progress we’ve made towards equity and more useful definitions of growth and excellence. While they don’t openly despise education with quite the fervor to which I grew accustomed in Oklahoma, this is still the Land of Pence and a VERY red state whose legislature simply goes to slightly more trouble to dress up their Trumpish loathing of all things social-contracty.

Even trying to ignore local politics, the undercurrent of seething resentment at ANY public money at all going towards the enlightenment of kids with blue collar parents and hard-to-pronounce last names is palpable. The hysteric bonds of ideology still chafe when again crushed (how surly they must be!) by the bitter angels of their nature.

Even assuming the best – that the state is acting out of willful ignorance rather than overt malice – I confess I am not looking forward to testing season. This has been a weird enough year and there are many things about my kids’ mindsets I wish I could magically transform – and no end to my personal failings as I’ve tried to lead them along a difficult path they have limited interest in treading.

And yet, I hate knowing they’ll be subjected to the monster in the weeks to come, and that there’s little I can do about it. For that matter, I don’t actually fault the district for their efforts to reshape some of their statistics, either. I suppose I could hold my breath that some new wave of rational political reform, untied to corporate overlords or bizarre ideology will sweep into power nine months from now, but that seems unlikely as well.

So I’ll keep trying to drag my little darlings to the water of life and hold their heads under until they discover the joys of learning, and hope that the clusterfoolery of standardized testing don’t exterminate what little progress we’ve made. If all else fails, I am confident that I am now fully qualified to get back into retail and help people like Timmy choose the best cell phone plan for him – as long as I don’t have to explain to a computer program how we figured it out.

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Am I Teaching To The Test?

September 13, 2017June 4, 2023 ~ Blue Cereal ~ 3 Comments

I’m teaching AP World History this year. It’s a first for me, and at times has proved a bit of a challenge. Do you have any idea how many cultures and nations and movements and causes and changes there are in the entire history of mankind? All interacting and comparing and evolving and being complicated?! With maps and graphs and primary sources and EVERYTHING?!?!

It’s daunting sometimes. Freakin’ Babylonians and their… cuneiform.

Today we spent about half of a 72-minute period looking at AP-style multiple choice questions. Eight of them, in total, one at a time. Students had about a minute to read and respond to the question privately – A, B, C, or D – then another minute to discuss it with a partner to justify or change their response. Finally, I’d either reveal the correct answer and we’d discuss, or we’d discuss… leading to the correct answer.

I’m pretty sure it looked a lot like test practice, for a test that’s not even coming until May 2018.

So… have I lost my mind? Sacrificed all that is holy to me? OH MY GOD AM I RUINING THE FUTURE?! Grab your vouchers, kids – Blue is teaching to the test.

Then again… maybe we should back up a bit.

For those of you unfamiliar with Advanced Placement, the basic idea is that students experience college-level work while still in high school. In the histories, at least, that means a LOT of informational text (usually in the form of a ginormous textbook), primary sources, charts-maps-graphs, note-taking, discussions, and writing writing writing writing oh-god-the-writing.

There’s also some writing involved.

Their grades are figured like any other class – however the teacher wants, pretty much – but come spring, students are encouraged to take the big ol’ AP Exam(s) for whatever course(s) they’ve had that year. In AP World that means three hours and fifteen minutes of multiple choice, short answers (paragraphs) and two essays – one built around provided documents and one not.

It’s good times, to be sure.

Possible scores range from 0 – 5, with 5 being the highest and 3 generally considered “passing.” The official rhetoric, though, is that it’s beneficial for students to take the course and the exam even if they score a 1 or 2, because of the experience it provides for them prior to college. (If I were sharing this with you as a parent or a teacher at one of my workshops, I’d now bust out a graph showing how much more likely kids are to stay in college and succeed while they’re there if they’ve taken a few AP classes in high school – whatever their scores on the exams. We could then quibble over those statistics and whether that correlation actually means what it looks like it means. I think it mostly does. Other smart people don’t. The resulting kerfuffle keeps Twitter interesting and makes drinking with other AP teachers far more entertaining than it might otherwise be.)

Now, not everyone is a fan of the College Board. That’s OK – they sometimes make me a bit crazy as well. Their reasoning and decision-making often leave me wanting to drink my own spit. And some of the people up that bureaucratic chain… Seriously?

But overall I’m quite a fan of AP – even those crazy tests. In fact…

*looks around furtively*

In fact… they’re-far-from-perfect-but-overall-I’d-argue-that-AP-Exams-at-least-those-in-the-social-sciences-with-which-I’m-familiar-serve-a-defensible-purpose-and-are-pretty-decent-tests-as-big-ol’-tests-go.

(I’ll give you a moment to recover, perhaps grab some rope and Google “how to dispose of blogger’s body”…)

But these exams do a decent job measuring a practical balance of content knowledge, attentive reading and document analysis skills, and the ability to put together a reasonable historical argument and back it up with facts and reason. There are few if any “gotcha” questions relying on trivia or excessive specifics, but neither are there many to which one might successfully respond without a decent understanding of actual world history.

Sure, there are things which are helpful to know about the way the test is set up and scored before you take it, and those “test-taking strategies” might conceivably nudge your score by a fraction or two, but overall…

AP Exams are – in my opinion – a pretty good measure of what they say they measure. Those things in turn correlate strongly with the sorts of skills and knowledge most history teachers say they want their kids to have, whatever their ability level.
Which brings me back to today and my eight multiple choice questions.

They were from someone else’s materials, so I won’t reproduce them here even by way of example, but it’s perfectly valid to ask whether or not what we were doing for 40 minutes of government-mandated class time was, in fact, learning meaningful history and associated skills, or practicing for a standardized test like any other – just dressed up a bit nicer and more likely to be picky about its weird mixed drink order.

I’m not a hundred percent certain, if I’m being entirely honest.

I think it was the right call with this class, for this course, as we march towards this exam. I feel good about how it went, actually. I’m particularly relieved about that because it took me forever to put the thing together just the way I wanted. But I did ask myself throughout the day if I might be selling my pedagogical soul for 40 pieces of College Board silver, payable in the form of student exam results and months of bragging-to-all-the-best-people for all-the-wrong-reasons.

So was it the right call? Is this a valid use of valuable class time?

The easy answer is that AP Exams are a known feature of the course going in; they are the stated “goal” and preparing for them is like coaching towards a big game or practicing the type of music you’re most likely to play in your next concert. Nothing wrong with that argument, but personally I need more.

We were revisiting content they should have mostly known, but in a different format and using someone else’s phrasing (rather than mine or theirs). That’s a good use of time… sometimes.

We were paying close attention to a map showing the spread of agriculture and pastoralism, and then to some excerpts from two Confucian writers, 500 years apart, who agreed on most things but disagreed on one rather significant issue. Neither may sound particularly exciting to you, but I assure you both are central social studies skills no matter what level of class or type of history you’re in.

Oh! And we were “close reading.” We talked about close reading, and debated details from our close reading, and went back and reread our close reading more closely. I’m a fan of close reading, even in what is in some ways a survey course. And my district is at the moment uber-focused on improving overall close reading skills. Let me assure you, as bright as most of them are, and as much as I love their weirdness and wit, many of my students – even in AP – are not naturally strong in close reading.

I don’t mean simply the sort of “close reading” you need to beat a test; I mean the sort you need to accurately register what people are actually saying. To bring your hard-won content knowledge to bear on specific circumstances or dilemmas. To infer causes or correlations, results or reactions – to be a well-rounded, useful, informed and thinking person.

I don’t think I feel bad about any of those things – particularly not that last one. But it was while pondering the “close reading” aspect of the exercise that I realized why I think I feel pretty good about the time we spent discussing these eight questions – multiple choice though they may be.

There was thinking.

Not brilliance, always. Not deep insights or personal expression. But thinking – the sort that utilizes content knowledge, attempts to apply relatively new skills, and takes risks in constructing responses. I know, I know… it sounds like I’m squeezing a whole lotta’ cognition out of a few educated guesses about the significance of Mesoamerican llamas and whatnot. But I don’t think so.

We live in a time and culture in which facts and reality not only don’t rule the day, they’re marginalized as active evils to be avoided. We create fictional histories and twisted versions of current events to justify glorifying the worst parts of ourselves; we’ve largely sacrificed our ideals for the illusion of increased security and the shaky promise of a few more dollars in our pocket.

Stopping to consciously think – to apply supportable facts to complicated questions, and to look closely at related information, to be intentional in the application of proclaimed priorities and values – that seems like a very good use of time, period – whatever the time period. Kinda makes me want to do it more often.

Don’t worry, though. I haven’t gone full Legit Grit-Master or anything. Friday we colored – sort of. Tomorrow we’re paraphrasing historical documents then recapping them in short bursts out loud via some system I haven’t quite sorted out yet. We won’t even be talking about AP-style anything again until the last week of this month.

At which point we’ll probably revisit the Multiple Choice and talk about what makes a good Short Answer response on the exam. I mean, come on – I don’t want to have to explain why more of my kids didn’t get that ‘3’ next time I’m at dinner with those AP teachers, do I?

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Test Anxiety is Real (Guest Blog, Barbie Jackson)

April 18, 2016June 4, 2023 ~ Blue Cereal

Our 3rd grade OCCT high stakes test starts Monday. This test, due to RSA and our Oklahoma legislature, requires our 8-year-old students to pass the test or being retained in 3rd grade (unless ridiculous and out of reach exemptions are met).

After cramming a year (or two, or three – depending on the child and circumstances) of learning into 6 months, and devoting the past six weeks to “test prep” across all of 3rd grade, our stress levels are beyond measure. Our students, their parents, teachers, administrators – it’s taken over our worlds, both at school and at home.

I left school yesterday, headed to the store, bought even more nutritional snacks for my class, trying to give that extra boost in hopes it might mean answering ONE MORE QUESTION correctly. I dropped them off at school and headed home to “relax and enjoy my weekend” as suggested by my principal. She knows me so well, we both laughed as she said it.

Mentally exhausted, I was asleep by 7. When I woke up to go to bed, I just lay there – for close to two hours – with my mind and heart racing. After drifting off to sleep, the nightmares started.

From dreaming about grades, being forced to eat mouthfuls of fat and gristle, fighting with staff members about the demands of our new reading curriculum, crawling on my hands and knees on the hallways at the state department begging to find out our scores that just came in and finding out all my students failed the test, and crying and screaming with my administrators as they were trying to calm me, my husband woke me up and asked what in the world was wrong because I kept moaning and crying in my sleep.

Waking up from a nightmare normally is a relief because you know it isn’t real. I didn’t feel relief this morning. Instead, my tongue, jaw, neck, and shoulders are sore from the pressure, my mind continues to race, and my heart is broken for my kids. They are my kids. I spend nearly every day with them. I know their fears, their worries, their joys, and their little quirks that make them who they are. They will always be my kids.

Test anxiety is real. If it were just me, I’d adapt. But can you imagine what my 8, 9, and 10 year-olds are dealing with? I pray for them – regularly. I ask for you to pray for them, too. Thank you.

Do you know what it’s like to look a child in the eyes while they ask if they are going to pass the test or not, and you don’t want to answer? When you’ve told them from day one that you’ll always be honest with them, but you also you know that because of their mental or physical disability, or their circumstances, or other realities beyond their control, their chances aren’t good?

It doesn’t matter that they’ve made such great gains, or that they’re now able to read words and books that they couldn’t before. It doesn’t matter that they’re becoming eager readers, finding excitement in books and gaining confidence in themselves. It doesn’t matter that they have so many gifts and so much potential. All that matters is a score on a one-time test that will decide if they’re “smart enough” or “good enough”.

So you say things like, “Just try your best. I’m proud of you. You’ve worked so hard, etc.” But deep down you know they will fail the test and that information will be shared with them by their parents, and their self esteem, their confidence will plummet–because of a high stakes test.

Sometimes it’s not about learning difficulties. By this time of year, many of our ‘regular’ students are beyond done. “Stick a fork in me,” their expressions say – “I’m D. O. N. E. Done duh-done done DONE.”

By the time they finish reading long pages of passage after passages, comparing poems to recipes to dictionary pages to newspaper articles to plays, by the time they’ve explained when to use a thesaurus vs. an encyclopedia vs. an almanac, glossary, or index – by that time they’ve sat for over an hour, completely still and completely quiet.

By that time they could care less about going back to paragraph 7 to compare the main idea to stanza 4 of the previous poem. They start filling in bubbles just to finish.

I can’t say that I blame them one bit. My 8-year-old mind probably would have done the same thing. Honestly, my 37-year-old brain would too.

There’s that kid who hurries and starts guessing because her classmates are starting to finish and she doesn’t want to be last and thought of as “dumb” by her classmates. She doesn’t want them staring at her in frustration because they can’t talk, read, or move until she’s done.

There’s that kid who raises her hand within 10 minutes saying she has finished the test. So by law, you have to turn it in.

There’s that creative soul who starts to see some type of pattern or picture in the answers and finishes coloring in the bubbles to create that dragon.

There’s that kid who’s being neglected, probably sidetracked about where they’ll be going after school, what they’ll find to eat for dinner, or worried about mom that was hit by her boyfriend the night before. That kid that fills your thoughts every evening, whose name is well-known by your spouse, and who you cry over and pray for. That kid’s taking the same test.

There are several of them who are doing great, but simply progress at a slower rate. They’re not Pop Tarts. Some require “bake” time.

Our legislators presume to know what’s best for our kids. I beg them to come visit while I monitor my kids during testing. I want them to see first-hand what it’s like. I beg them to come throughout the year, on that first day of school, when my kids are asking when the state test is, or sit with me during conferences when parents are crying and asking me how they can help their child get ready for the test. The test is federal law, but the high stakes portion of it is the sole fault of our Oklahoma legislators.

I didn’t really understand the damage the wrong sorts of testing can do until I started teaching 3rd grade. It’s not good for kids and accomplishes nothing for educators. You can argue it’s a necessary evil but I assure you, that’s only half-true.

It’s not at all necessary.