Oh, and improve student achievement and teacher retention rates, increase attendance and graduation rates, and reduce anxiety among elementary students.
It's a simple plan, and it will make TPTB nervous from the outset. But they should find comfort in the fact that it is scientifically based.
The Plan? Stop administering OAKS to students in 3rd, 4th and 5th grades. The current practice is at best wasteful, at worst (more likely, in my mind) harmful in other ways as well.
What would be the result of this Cessation of Hostilities toward the cultivation of the intellect?
We could:
1. Increase time for teaching and learning by anywhere from 3 (in really good schools that only take minimal time for the tests) to 20 (in schools that spend a month on test-prep) days with no added expense. (The longest school year in the world doesn't do any good it's not being used well.) We could add significantly to the school year without touching the calendar.
2. Make school libraries and technology labs available to students and teachers for instructional activities. (There are schools in which the entire technology inventory is tied up for months out of each year because one or another grade has to take state tests in reading, math or science.)
3. Increase the willingness of the best teachers and administrators to work in the most challenging schools. This is critical. Policy-makers bemoan the fact that great teachers don't line up to go to work in struggling schools. But the fact is that teachers who work in struggling schools are often required to employ mind-numbing, commercially-driven strategies aimed at putting band-aides on test scores. Of course great teachers don't want to teach in a place where the teaching profession has been reduced to reading scripted lessons to a room full of defeated youngsters.
4. Save significant dollars and hours that are currently wasted on teaching teachers how to interpret the results of standardized tests (This activity is often referred to as Professional Learning Communities). What if teachers were allowed (and supported) instead to use this time to learn more about the world through participation is real Professional Learning Communities?
5. Save countless dollars and hours that are spent revising the State Standards and the State Assessments for 8-to-11-year-olds. Not one of these hours or dollars adds one iota to student achievement, and yet we continue to hold bake sales for classroom books while throwing good money after bad in the quest for the well-phrased mandate articulating the need for children to know how to add and subtract using carrying and borrowing.
6. Allow children the joy of experiencing a well-rounded school day rather than punishing them with 'early intervention' when they fail to perform on a standardized test. There are students all over Oregon who are being deprived of part of the normal school experience so that they can spend 'double' time doing something at which they are judged to be deficient. I can't think of a better way to make a child hate a subject forever than to force him to spend twice as much time at it while he is missing out on something else that he finds of interest.
7. In the place of anxiety over testing, cultivate a love of learning. For children who love to learn, testing takes care of itself.
My proposal is to give these children a chance to grow up before we begin weighing and measuring the contents of their minds. This is particularly urgent in light of the fact that long-term academic achievement depends far more on the virtues of care, commitment, respect and diligence than it does on specific subject-matter prerequisites. To fail to understand this is to miss the boat so entirely as to risk an ankle sprain from the jolt of striking dry land.
To those who worry that without OAKS academic deficiencies would go undetected, I have to suggest that you go introduce yourself to a real teacher. Elementary teachers know who can and can't read. They know who can and can't do math. A teacher who doesn't know these things regarding his or her own students needs to hang it up. But to organize an entire system around the assumption of incompetence in every classroom is both unrealistic and wasteful.
For those who argue the urgency of EARLY INTERVENTION, your theoretical ice is pretty thin. Early intervention makes the adults feel good. But most children just need more time to get their feet under themselves. And the most urgent needs for early intervention have never relied on state assessments for detection.
Longer School Year? More instructional time? Savings? All doable. Abandon OAKS in the elementary grades.
Sometimes progress depends on the bold implementation of a recent stroke of genius. But there is also something to be said for the decisive abandonment of a deeply entrenched monument to mediocrity.
P.S. I am aware of the federal mandate for testing. So let's grab a test off the shelf (whichever one requires the least amount of time) administer it, and never speak of it again. The savings in instructional time, money, and quality of life would be reduced only slightly by the nuisance. But to continue the charade by which we treat the testing nuisance as a boon to education is unconscionable.
