Administrator’s Academy
Feb 2001 Springfield You might ask..Why am I here? One of your group heard me mention standards and testing in passing in another presentation I gave and they asked me to expand upon it. For those of you who may be visual learners, please note that I wore black today.
“Standards and Testing in Our Schools.”
My 1st grade bean… Mrs. Walker had us plant a bean, put it in a cup and place it on the windowsill …we put our name on each cup. I couldn’t believe that on the second day nothing had happened. Not even on the third. I didn’t know for sure but I’d heard that my friend Darold was peeing in my cup during lunch hour. Every morning we’d rush past the playground and go right to the bean cups.
We had a bean ceremony every morning. After the pledge of allegiance we’d hold hands, face our row of beans and shout, “Wake up little bean! Time to grow!” We even named our beans. Mine was Fred after Fred Mertz on I Love Lucy. And here’s the strange part: Mrs. Walker told us practically nothing about beans. Or as we used to say in Pike County, she didn’t tell us beans about beans. She told us how deep to plant them and when to water them. That was it. But every member of the 1st grade class of Perry Grade School, 1954 knew everything about beans. We couldn’t help it! We just couldn’t stand to have a bean …our bean..growing just six feet from our desk and not wonder what was happening. My information came from a very ancient set of The People’s Encyclopedia. I told all my friends. My friend Roberta was lucky. Her uncle worked for the Extension service and he told her all about beans and she blabbed it all over the lunch table. Gary’s dad worked for Pioneer so he already knew. But everybody found out how a bean grew. I made a quick mental count this week and figured that I have taken 15 science courses since first grade. I have no idea what happened in any of them. But by golly, I know how a bean grows.
I’ve spent many hot summers working for Burrus Seed Company and I never drive by a cornfield in the spring without thinking of how a bean grows.
The U of I recently hosted a group of Japanese businessmen to Central Illinois. Part of their tour was near my home in Arenzville and I was asked to join the tour. I told Japanese how a bean grew.
I recently asked an elementary teacher if they still grow beans in 1st grade. They didn’t. It’s not a part of the state plan until 3rd grade. The kids have to go two whole years without knowing how a bean grows. I asked her if they did like Mrs. Walker and just planted it..then talked to it every morning. She laughed. No, the bean planting is now goal-specific. I’m not making this up. And they’re tested on it… and they have a practice test.
I’ll bet the kids hate their damned beans.
Test-taking has now become a subject ranking alongside math, English and science. According to last week’s TIME magazine, teaching kids how to take state exams is now a $50 million business. $50 million. Last year, the great God of test-taking-teaching, Sylvan Learning Center introduced a program to prepare your third grader for state tests: $900.
And the law that Bush signed on January 8th requiring annual test in reading and math in grades 3-8 by 2005 hasn’t even kicked in. But don’t worry! The feds will fund it.. the law pledges up to $1000 a child with low-scoring skills to teach among other things… test-taking.
The Princeton Review offers a primer for parents includes such advice as “make sure your child eats a large breakfast.” The cost? A mere $1950. Some schools are already paying over $20,000 a year for test-taking-teaching.
Deborah Holmes, principal at Jefferson High School in Washington D.C. had the choice of buying more computers or paying $21,000 for a test-taking program. She said, “I guess we’ll buy the computers another year.”
What are the magical things being taught? Kaplan: learn to skim instead of read thoroughly The quickest ways to fill in the bubbles on the answer sheet Don’t dwell on spelling and punctuation when writing essays
Summed up by principal Ron D'Incau who recently had his school throw out three of weeks of study of Greek and Roman culture to make room for test-prep classes. “Some teachers want to teach things that are nice to teach but aren’t really standards.” The stupid jerks! (I added that) He went on to say, “You might teach a tremendous unit on dinosaurs, but nothing in the standards calls for knowledge of dinosaurs so you have to take it out.”
We are now in Round 349 of the re-vamped plan for School Improvement… we’ve been promised that this is the final plan. If you remember, plan # 345 was the (USIP) Ultimate School Improvement plan #346 Was the USIPR… Ultimate School Improvement Plan, Really! #347 was the …. WNK , The We’re not Kidding this time! #348 the “Ok, we blew it last time but now we’ve got it right.”
Why don’t they just come out with the #350. Called: “Look, the manufacturer’s lobby put pressure on us and we had to do something or we’d loose their political contributions!”
I have devised an IGAP test to send to each educator in Illinois: Question # 1) How many hours have you spent on the SIP program? How much smarter are you kids as a result? 2) Now that you’ve taught them to write the IGAP way how many have died from boredom? 3) How many Nobel laureates, Pulitzer Prize winners or Rhoads Scholars have you turned out since they learned to skim the material and fill in the bubbles more clearly? 4) If it’s called the School Improvement plan, please list the ways your school has improved.
Would be a waste of my breath to stand up here and tell you how we need to ignore the current round of insanity coming out of the Government Bastions of Education. Many of you may actually think that it’s your main job to follow the edicts of the state board. Some of you may be mislead enough to think they know what’s best for us. In any case, no one’s going to do what they should and lay your bodies in a ring around the state house until something is done. Even if you did, the various manufacturing lobbyists would quickly build a bridge so the legislators could walk over your cold bodies.
No.. instead I propose subversion. A return to Mrs. Walker and her beans. The French did it successfully right under the nose of the Nazi regime. It should be easy to fool the legislature.
Like many of you, I’ve lived and taught through DLO’s, PLO’s, SIP’s, STP’s, BVD’s and the various SOB’s who’ve managed to take a heck of a lot of our time without making a heck of a lot of difference. I know that with the next administration will come a new and improved mandated plan.
Like you, I’ve been lied to repeatedly. “No! No! These Learning Objectives will never become actual state goals!” then “No! No! These state goals will not actually be used to rate schools!” then “No! No! None of this will in any way be tied to funding!”
Okay… this is the point in my speech at which you are saying one of these things to yourself: Well, he’s just a teacher and he doesn’t know the realities of the situation. (You’re wrong…I do… but I’ve got the guts to be an idealist..do you?) I’m going to retire in a few years and I’m tired of fighting windmills. (Wake up, you coward! Go out with a bang!) He’s right, but there’s nothing I can do to change things. (That’s a better answer..now keep listening.)
So what I’m suggesting here is more subtle…not a nuclear bomb.. more like sugar-coated anthrax. It’s a … blessed subeversion. A question: Do you have influence on what’s taught in your school and how teachers teach? (And if not, what the heck are you doing in the job?)
There is an alternative route.. Play the game if you must, but please keep encouraging teachers to teach… Remind yourself that test-taking is a science and a rather useless one in the large scheme of things.. but Teaching.. and Learning.. are Arts.
The Art… not the science of teaching.
I truly believe that one of the underlying goals of the last few educational plans is to make schools teacher-proof. Believe me, I am not being sarcastic. The goal of much of this hogwash is to design a system of standards, tests, and later methods, which will accomplish our goals with little thought or skill required from the teacher.
I urge you to fight that with your dying breath. If you have influence on teaching in your school, please shout, scream, cry, laugh.. do whatever you do the best…. to remind your staff that teaching is an art.
I know that your job and mine are slightly different. My idea of a good day is one, in which ground was gained, kids learned, kids were excited about learning. Your idea of a good day is one in which nothing important was burned to the ground, no one was killed, and your school board hasn’t completely lost its mind. This is the nature of being the boss. This is not a sin.
But you are still the direction-setter for your school. You are more than an administrator, you are a leader. As a teacher, I want that. Okay.. what am I talking about in keeping Teaching as an Art.. Learning as an art?
I have a unique position. I teach 7th-graders and seniors. I greet them as they enter our school system and wave goodbye as they leave.
One question I ask of seniors in their final year: “What was a defining moment in your education? A single day, a single class, perhaps a single moment that 1) you’ll remember for a very long time, and 2) somehow changed your thinking.. determined your course.”
Last year’s top answers: The day we spent in the nursing homes, dressed as clowns in 8th-grade.(In other words, the day they learned the joy of serving others…which by the way cannot be found in the state goals and standards) The day Mr. Anderson stood with us on top of the Hill Prairie near Meredosia and showed us how the glaciers carved out my hometown, then had us lay on our back for a very long time, just listening to the wind and trying to imagine what it must have been like to come across this prairie in a wagon. (no..sorry.. that’s not covered either) The night I got to start in basketball because we had a flu epidemic in the school. (oops..missed again) The day the English teacher picked me to tutor 3rd-graders on their math. The day Matt played his baritone in class. (Tell the story.) When my fourth-grade teacher sent a note home saying that I really seemed to care about other people. I didn’t know it was important until then. The day the singers came to our school. (a group from a local college) (Did I mention that the first programs often cut from schools to make way for testing classes are the arts?) The day our 7th-grade teacher sat us down in a circle and spent the whole period helping us find out why we didn’t like each other. (sorry.. not tested) I’ve taught for 30 years. I’ve been asking that question for at least 20. Never have I heard a response to that question that mentioned anything covered by the state goals and standards and very little which shows up on any standardized test. Students should not be allowed to determine the entirety of their curriculum, but for gosh sakes, shouldn’t anything they feel important be a part of our standards? Shouldn’t they be right at least once in 20 years?
The grade school teachers in our district love to scare the Jr. High staff about what’s coming. The group of 7th-graders I have this year have been alternately touted as The slowest The hardest to reach The hardest to control And the most distracted class to ever pass through our system.
You know what? The grade school teachers were right. This class wears their Attention Deficit Disorders like designer jeans… you really aren’t somebody unless you have a pair of your own. When it comes time for them to take the next round of state mandated tests, God only knows how they will score, but it won’t be high. But you know what? I can’t remember having such a successful year and that success will never show up on a state test. Jason has learned to stop hitting people as soon as he gets to school..he now waits until P.E. Last week Josh kept his finger out of his nose for an entire period. There’s a lot to be said for duct tape. Mick has now developed at least a two-second wait between the time a thought hits his brain and when it comes out his mouth. Don’t laugh. This was a major victory. Megann no longer sits in the back of the class, covers her head and cries when called upon. She still hasn’t had a right answer all year long and her tests scores will be awful, but she keeps her head in the air.
Why? Because I’m a miracle worker? No. Because I teach with artists. I teach with people who care more about the child than the child’s scores on any particular day. Because we have an athletic director who comes to the music programs because he cares about the whole child. Because we have a girls basketball coach who once wouldn’t let them practice until their speech contest material was memorized. These people are………… Artists! They know the art of encouragement They know the art of teaching self-discipline They know the art of reading a child’s actions and emotions And most of all, they know the art of teaching…and not testing.
Such things are possible, my friend. You have artists in your school. You have teachers who know that watching the bean grow, living life right alongside the bean, talking to the bean, discovering…the bean..is what makes the child grow. Not a quick check of the standards and goals then a drill on how to take the test.
Let me wrap this up…
In 1922 Thomas Edison predicted that "the motion picture is destined to revolutionize our educational system and ... in a few years it will supplant largely, if not entirely, the use of textbooks."
Twenty-three years later, in 1945, William Levenson, the director of the Cleveland public schools' radio station, claimed that "the time may come when a portable radio receiver will be as common in the classroom as is the blackboard."
Forty years after that the noted psychologist B. F. Skinner, referring to the first days of his "teaching machines," in the late 1950s and early 1960s, wrote, "I was soon saying that, with the help of teaching machines and programmed instruction, students could learn twice as much in the same time and with the same effort as in a standard classroom." Ten years after Skinner's recollections were published, President Bill Clinton campaigned for "a bridge to the twenty-first century ... where computers are as much a part of the classroom as blackboards."
Our current panacea is testing and standards. Education had better hope that history does not repeat itself.
Find your artists. Encourage your artists. And most importantly, as the Baby Boomers leave a huge hole in the Illinois teaching force, create your new artists. I learned from my artists.. and so did you. I learned from Paul Heck, a high school physics teacher who told us to rip out 24 pages in our physics book because he discovered that that knowledge was of no possible use to anyone. I learned from Frank Neil who knew that in order to teach me piano, he had to stand behind me and beat out the rhythm on my back with a rolled-up Weekly Reader… and that a cold bottle of Pepsi would dry up even a ten-year-old’s tears and make him want to try it again. I learned from Gwendolyn Woods who taught me that you could learn Latin better by ignoring the textbook and reading the advertisements in magazines. I learned from a marvelous man named Dr. Charles Frank who never gave us a test all year long then for the fun of it, gave a quiz at the end of the year which we found out was our final exam. We were having so much fun with Chaucer that we had no idea he was teaching us.
Bob Slavens story…. How did I know to do that? Because when I was his age, someone showed me the art…. Of teaching.
Do standards and testing in and of themselves kill the art of teaching? Not necessary. It’s the time testing takes. It’s the meetings, and committees, and paperwork and baloney that kills…the art of teaching. It kills the time to plan, it kills the time to teach, and in the worst case scenario, it drives people from the profession. It’s the implication to a beginning teacher that meeting the set of goals is of primary importance that kills… the art of teaching. It’s the wrong-headed notion that anyone who doesn’t know your kids, somehow knows what’s best for them that’s killing… the art of teaching.
I should add that my bean died. Every time Mrs. Walker would leave the room to take the lunch count, I rushed to my cup, pulled out my bean and checked to see how it was doing. I tested it….. to death. I knew everything about beans, but I killed it with testing.
Thanks for listening.
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