Once more into the breach...

I don't like repeating topics so soon, but it seems that testing is a popular topic lately. The unfortunate thing is that these tests and testing results are hard for educators to understand, much less the leaders and parents outside of the building ...and programs like No Child Left Behind only serve to confuse us even more.

The basic premise behind NCLB is that all children will meet a high level of skill in reading and math by 2014. No excuses! Now, of all the complaints about the NCLB program, several issues stand out to me, one dealing with human nature and the other with how testing results are interpreted by the government.

First, the nature of humans. We have tens of millions of children in our schools, and sometimes I wonder if our politicians and leaders confuse them for machines that just need the right programing. Too often they fail to take into account the outside influences that impact our children and blame those shortcomings on the schools and the teachers (For example, concerns about their neighborhood/community, financial status of the family, medical problems for themselves or a family member, lack of parental support, social expectations from peers, etc). All of these affect the school day of our students but are just brushed under the rug in regards to test results. A couple of test days out of 180 schools days is not a good gauge of our students' abilities, especially if that day is influenced by one of those examples mentioned above. Besides, when was the last time you ever saw a large group of (individualistic) human beings all do the same thing, on the same day, in the same way?

As for interpretations, it's not as simple as saying, "Since 86% of your students passed the test, you're a good school," or "Only 54% of your students failed the test, so you are a bad school." A school's student body is broken into many different categories such as gender, ethnicity, economic status, special education, and English language learners. These groups are then graded individually. So... a school could be doing well with 86% of the students passing the math test, BUT if one of those individual groups fail (male special education, female economically disadvantaged, African-American females, Caucasian males), then the school is considered to have failed as a whole. If that happens two years in a row, you are now a school that "needs improvement." Schools earn this title regardless of a large majority of the students passing the tests at the required levels.

So when I hear about things like this from the Feds and this from the State, I can start to hope that level heads will prevail when it comes to the education and future of our children.

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Before I sign off, let me clarify one thing... I'm not saying that we get rid of all accountability for schools. That would be a swing too far in the other direction. I just hope we can come to an agreement on a high standard of education for our children and stop moving the bar like some carnival game that you can never win.