The end-of-grade tests continue across Vance County today, which gives us another opportunity to reflect on how good intentions can lead us down a nightmare path.
The basic idea behind the EOGs, as well as the state ABCs of Public Education and the federal No Child Left Behind programs for which they are used, is sound. It’s all about accountability — accountability for educating young minds and accountability for the tens of millions of dollars each school district spends.
Standardized testing almost has to be a part of any reasonable system of accountability. For good or bad, there’s no better way to ensure that children in different schools and different districts are getting an equivalent education.
But our testing system has gotten way out of hand.
We’re not so concerned about the common complaint that educators are teaching to the tests. After all, if the tests are properly designed to reflect the state curriculum, and if the classes are properly taught to follow that curriculum, the result will seem as if the classes are being taught to fit the tests.
The problem isn’t that we’re teaching to the tests; the problem is that we’re teaching almost exclusively for the tests. As long as our elementary school children can post “proficient” scores on a few exams over three days in May, nothing else matters. Who cares whether the children learn anything? Who cares whether they end the year that much closer to being ready to take productive places in society?
The calendar for Vance County Schools says next Wednesday, May 25, is the last day of the school year for children. But any real teaching ended by April 29 so that all of May could be dedicated to passing the EOGs. Students have received plenty of instruction on test taking, done plenty of review, taken plenty of practice tests, but they will go an entire month without learning anything new. That’s 10 percent of the school year, exactly 18 school days, wasted.
That’s how the EOGs have perverted our education system. Because those tests are all we judge our schools on, they necessarily become what our schools are concerned about. And our children, who really aren’t dummies, know that their teachers and administrators have to focus on the bottom line — what percentage of students are rated as proficient — so the students know that the rest of the year doesn’t matter. They can be stellar students all year, but if they bomb on the EOGs, they’re bound for summer school. And they realize the opposite is true: They can do the minimum to get by all year, and they’ll be just fine as long as they can post a 3 or a 4 on each of the EOGs.
Given that accountability is here to stay, as it should be, what can be done to salvage this system? As shocking as this may seem, we don’t pretend to have all the answers, but we do have a suggested first step: The state needs to revamp the tests and their scoring.
Test writers can’t seem to avoid gotcha questions, which throw tricks or gradations of subtlety at the test takers to produce wrong answers. But the EOGs shouldn’t be about shades of gray and nuances on the level of the difference between “convince” and “persuade.” Keep the tests simple. If you want to know whether a child understands a reading passage, for instance, give him one possible answer that’s clearly correct, not a series of answers that aren’t quite perfect.
We think simpler, not necessarily easier, tests would be fairer and require that much less classroom time be spent on test taking instead of test content.
On the scoring side, scrap the 4-point scale. Again, the purpose of these tests should be simple — to judge whether each child has learned the minimal amount required under the curriculum to move on to the next grade — so the scoring should be simple. Let’s make the EOGs pass-fail. If you make the required score on an EOG test — say, 70 percent — you pass. Period. Design the tests so that A and B students should be able to post the necessary scores with little more than a few days of review and so that C students shouldn’t have much trouble if they put in a good effort.
Instead, we try to do too much with the EOGs. They’re not just about making sure no child is left behind; they’re about proving how far Johnny is ahead of Sally. We’re not just worried about whether our children have learned enough to pass; we’re worried about whether they can post 4s and be rated in the 90th percentile or beyond. We get endless ways to evaluate the test results, forcing the test writers to conceive of endless ways of crafting questions that differentiate between the brilliance of Child A and the brilliance of Child B.
It all collapses under its own weight. In an effort to do everything with a limited tool, a standardized final exam, we paralyze ourselves. The only way to move forward, to free teachers from the tyranny of the test and to free children from the terror of the test, is to step back and remember what tests are good for: evaluating whether each student has learned a sufficient amount of the curriculum. That’s all we ask of a spelling test or a pop quiz on last night’s homework; why must we ask so much more of the EOGs?