The Silly Season

In the education world it is the silly season. Here in Illinois it is the ISAT testing. Illinois Standards Achievement Test. Given every year to various grades it is the measure by which teachers, administrators, schools and districts rise and fall. If they don’t achieve their goals for improving their scores schools can be put on watch lists or taken over by the state, principals can be fired, teachers can be released or have their tenure held up. The stress level in the school is toxic and counter productive.

The preparations for this annual feast of anxiety have taken on biblical proportions. They spend hours telling the students how to prepare for this test, what foods to eat before hand, how much sleep to get, what exercises to do, how calm themselves if they feel too much pressure. Keep in mind some of these youngsters are in the third grade. One class had three pages of instructions on how to take this test. And they hand out peppermint LifeSavers because they help with attention. I should of have had truck load in my office. Oh, grab some dark chocolate because that is brain food. Well yeah!

Teachers spend months focusing all of the instruction on the test. Ignoring other subjects not covered or not taken into consideration for the assessment of the school. Science is not one of the keys so it is tossed in where it can fit. Social Studies is not covered so you try fit it where you can. Making sure the illusion that no child is ever going to be left behind is intact.

Yesterday I watched as 6th, 7th, and 8th graders took the test. I watched as some fretted over it and others just messed around. Today I watched third graders take this test. I watched as some of them gave right answers and others gave wrong answers. I have watched as teachers and administrators jolted around like every surface they touched was charged with static electricity.

I know education had to be improved. I see it every day. But this is not way. Standardized testing as it is currently done is not the avenue. Not at the expense of creativity in instruction; not at the price of suffocating anxiety; not with the well intentioned but wrong conviction that all children are the same and can be squeezed into the same educational mold.

Yes, it is the silly season.