Reforming, Deforming, Transforming
By Dr. Eugene Maier |
A few weeks ago I was at an end-of-the-school-year gathering of teachers, their spouses and friends. The conversation turned to the Oregon version of the educational reform movement.
The teachers agreed that the aura of their classrooms was changing, especially in those grades (3, 5, 8 and 10) in which state-mandated assessments were taking place. Their students are being tested to see if they are attaining "benchmark expectations" in meeting "content standards" adopted by the state department of education. Since the public and, especially, politicians view the results as measures of teachers' effectiveness, the teachers felt compelled to make preparing students for these tests their number one priority. The tenseness of testing permeated their classrooms, replacing the comfortable feeling of students engaged in learning. And, everyone agreed, their enthusiasm for teaching was diminished.
The state's assessment program is sophisticated--complicated may be a better word--requiring much more than filling bubbles with No. 2 lead, although there's some of that, too. On the problem-solving portion of the math tests, students are graded on five criteria: conceptual understanding, processes and strategies, verification, communication, and accuracy. (Because of confusion about how one gives evidence they verified their work, the verification score is not used for "decisions about students" but "will inform the field test"--whatever that means). In order for students to obtain the new, much-touted-but-of-unknown-significance Certificate of Initial Mastery, a student must achieve state-established scores on the tests as well as on 64 "work samples" in areas and grade-levels designated by the state. The "completed, scored student work" is to be "kept together in any fashion, from a portfolio, to a file folder or other system, as determined at the local level." This is just for the Certificate of Initial Mastery; the Certificate of Advanced Mastery is yet to come.
Teachers in a local school estimate that if they did all the preparation, testing, and assessment suggested by the state department they would spend a third of the school year on testing and "work samples." One fifth grade teacher reported that his 28 students collectively generated some 200 work samples this past year. With each of these graded according to 5 or 6 criteria, his students generated more than 1000 separate grades on these samples alone. In some school districts, student portfolios are passed along with the student from teacher to teacher. Supposedly teachers will study them to acquaint themselves with the students level of achievement. But this is more information than a teacher can digest in a reasonable amount of time. Most teachers will learn more in a couple of weeks of observation than they will glean from perusing portfolios.
Teachers aren't the only apprehensive ones. Reader response to articles in the local paper about the new look in Oregon education are largely negative. Expecting something more, one writes, "The only reform-related product to reach the classroom is the assessment portion." Another chimes in, "Nothing but tests have materialized." The parent of a high-school freshman observes, "We have proficiency tests in everything but spitting." Parents are asking that their children be excused from taking the tests. The parent of an about-to-be third grader writes that his child has decided he won't take the test: "[the child] felt, as I did, that it would be a waste of time to take the CIM test just to find out that he is reading above grade level and is very good at math. We already know these things. So why should he take the test? On test days we'll do something enjoyable." Students wonder, "Why all the testing?" "When you try to tell them it's important,&quo