Stuck on the Tests

Guiding Question: How can we change the way we assess students to better improve their learning?

 

True or false – students are actually learning the material teachers are feeding them at school?

 

I urge you to think on that question for a bit because the answer is not as obvious as we had previously thought (or hoped.) Are students really learning the material nowadays? Or are they just memorizing facts for the tests and then clearing their brains afterwards for the next wave of information to come their way? This entry looks at chapter four of Content Area Reading, “Assessing Students and Texts,” and what insight this chapter will bring to this question.

 

I can tell you from my own experience that there were many classes in which I memorized facts, spit them out on a test, and promptly forgot most of them. And  while I do not think students will ever be faced with a situation in which telling someone the date of when the Gettysburg Address was delivered will ever be a matter of life or death – I do believe that our students are in some ways getting gypped in terms of school.

 

There is that wonderful phrase of “teaching for the test” that haunts teachers. And the sad reality is that most teachers are teaching for the test because of the pressure put upon them to get good test scores. We are in the midst of a high stakes testing fiasco that demands every school use standardized tests to see whether or not the school is meeting the adequate yearly progress (AYP). It is a check for our schools that puts pressure on our students.

 

And these tests are only locked in the present moment. These high stakes tests have the power to impact students for the rest of their lives. SAT and ACT, anyone? Nonetheless, even though the tests look towards the future, they impact the present too. Remember the phrase “teachers teach for the test?” Teachers are given curriculum geared towards the tests, curriculums that ignore basically everything else because that information will not be on the tests.

 

So that is where most teachers are now. And it is not their fault. Teachers are not teaching for the tests because they want to. They are under pressure as well with the state standards and government legislation that demands standardized testing in order to get funding. But teachers are not stuck there! Teachers can go above and beyond what they do now and implement another form of assessment for their students that truly gets at the heart of assessment and that is are students even learning anything?

 

Teachers can do this by doing authentic assessments. These kind of assessments are structured around observation: behaviors during class, work turned in, and even test scores. However, authentic assessments require that teachers go a step further than just observation – teachers must act on their observations and make changes as deemed necessary. So you observe your student acting out during reading time – that means you act by adapting that student’s reading time so it benefits them the most.

 

Another authentic assessment is the portfolio. The portfolio is a collection of the student’s work chosen by both the teacher and the student. The teacher chooses the assignments to be collected and the student can choose the work they think best represents them. It is a team project that provides organization, good student involvement in self reflection, reflection on student’s needs and skills, and assistance in planning future assignments. This collaborative approach helps students create meaning for their work and helps teachers see where their students are and how to help them go farther.

 

Teachers need to move away from the emphasis on high stakes testing and towards the more authentic types of assessment if we want to see if students are actually learning anything because isn’t that was school is for – learning something? It will be difficult and we can’t remove high stakes testing completely, but teachers can go above and beyond their work to really make sure their teaching is for the improvement of their students.

The Beginning

For this class we are using two texts: Content Area Reading: Literacy and Learning Across the Curriculum by Vacca, Vacca, and Mraz, as well as Content Area Writing: Every Teacher’s Guide by Daniels, Zemelman, and Steineke. We started out with the opening chapters of each text and each text advocates for the same principle: literacy advances students. Therefore, it is vitally important for all teachers in all content areas, not just the English teachers, to work to improve the literacy of their students.

Initially this concept seems ludicrous. How on earth are math and science teachers supposed to improve the literacy of their students? Shouldn’t it just be up to the English teachers? (And as a future English teacher I would say that yes – I will play a huge role in improving the literacy of my students through intense work with reading and writing.) But other teachers will also have impacts whether they are aware of it or not. Literacy is not just about the plain and simple reading and writing. Literacy is about critical thinking and clear communication. Without critical thinking and clear communication, our students would be at a steep disadvantage once they get out into “the real world.”

So what are we to do? If literacy is so important and it is up to every single teacher in every content area to improve the literacy of their students – how do we go about doing that? Well, the first chapter of Content Area Reading suggests teachers really focus on content vs. process – and as a future English teacher I know that I am definitely in one content area these writers were looking at. So often English teachers will hand out a novel, tell the class to read however many pages, and then expect a great classroom discussion full of philosophical insights and intellectual comparisons to real life…and so often English teachers find that maybe one or two students who already really love reading will give them just that while the rest of the class mumbles their way through discussion merely to get the participation points without understanding the novel – if they actually read it. Our process is all wrong for improving literacy; therefore, it needs to change. We need to find a way to look at our content (novels) and find a better process that gets every student reading, understanding, and learning. A mission easier said than done if I ever saw one.

I believe that teachers need to look at what students are reading today from Facebook statuses to graphic novels to sports stats to magazine articles and find a way to pull in aspects of those “texts” into the classroom assignments. (Yes this is not how we learned or how it was done in the old days when students were expected to just read and get it.) Teachers need to be creative in engaging the students into wanting to read novels or at least being able to get through them with an understanding of the novel. And no, we are not bending to their every desire or making it easier for them by spoon feeding them the right answers so schools can boost their scores. We are changing the way they learn. They can learn the things we did when we went through school – they just need to learn it a different way. Students need to see the real life connections in materials. They need to know that they are not just reading some dusty old classic for nothing. If we can show how useful novels can be in real life situations, we have a better chance of improving students’ literacy. If we can reach them on their level with their multiple literacies (digital literacy, media literacy, health literacy, etc.) we can help improve them.

And this is just through reading! Think of what writing could do. Students already write more than I ever did growing up. And while they are not writing more academically, the sheer volume of the non-academic writing they produce is insane. Every text message, every blog post, every e-mail, every post-it note is a form of writing. We need to stop ignoring that and instead we need to acknowledge it. We need to encourage their continuing volume of writing while giving them the tools to write well and to exercise discretion when wondering whether to include that emoticon in that research paper or to find another way of using words to say what they want.

And now I just gave English teachers the harshest demands since we are the ones people look to when the idea of teaching literacy pops up, but I believe we can do it. And I only read the first chapters of these texts so who knows what I will learn throughout both of them? The bottom line is that we as teachers know something needs to be done – so now we have to do it.