Bronwyn Harris, Author

People always ask me why teachers don't like standardized tests.  They seem surprised that we "don't want accountability.  That's not it.  Here's an excellent example of why many teachers do not like standardized tests. It's well worth a read. Three years ago: A Tip for New Parents Four years ago: Scientific Proof for my Burnout                         Too Many Children Five years ago: Move Over, George Washington!

This is a guest blog graciously written by Nealey, who is a secondary school teacher.  She brings up some excellent points.  None of us want the standardized tests to matter, but the fact is that they do in many ways. I hope she'll write more posts in the future! Parents: Don’t tell your children that the standardized tests don’t matter. Standardized tests do matter, but unfortunately the system is flawed.   One of the problems with the tests is that s tudents are not held accountable for their test scores.   In an ideal world, all students would do their best because of the intrinsic value in doing one’s best.  If every student actually did their best then the tests might be a valuable way to judge teachers, schools, and educational programs.  However, we don't live in an ideal world. During testing, some student try their best, other students half-heartedly try, and some students don't try at all.  I have seen students bubble in patterns,...

Another old one.  I really would have appreciated an answer to this, even if it was "You're right and there's nothing we can do." Speaking the Truth.. ...whether or not anyone's listening. My letter (also known as career suicide) to the people in charge of "Research, Assessment, and Accountability" in my district. Also known as the department that makes my kids take so many tests. (They're not responsible for the state testing, only for the mountains of district testing heaped on top of the state testing). I may be blacklisted now, but there are some times that - even if it's just for my own sake - I need to say what I know to be true. Dear XXX, I am a 3rd grade teacher in this district. I have just finished giving my students the mid-year math assessment and mid-year language arts assessment and I have a number of concerns that I hope you can address for me. First, this is the second math assessment this year which ...

... the people scoring it. Please read this.  I'm going to order the book and would be happy to share it.  I'm not surprised by this, but I wish I were: Farley tells of test scorers who arrived each morning hung-over, and didn’t make much progress on their daily quotas until they had taken several “fortified” coffee breaks, test scorers who were far more interested in studying for the bar exam than in carefully reading the papers they were scoring, and foreign-born scorers who could not understand simple English. These stories are funny until one realizes that students’ fates hung in the balance. The results of some of these tests, like the California High School Exit Exam, may determine a young person’s future. Others, like the fourth and seventh grade writing samples of the California Standards Tests, may help decide which schools are closed and which stay open..... Several years ago one of the largest high schools in the Oakland was moved to a more punitive level o...

...three steps back. For the last 5-7 years, this district has had a major focus on "new small schools."  These small schools were going to totally transform the district (and may have done that if they had been given a chance) by offering smaller classes and schools with more parent-teacher-child interactions, less room to fall through the cracks, more ability and special programs to meet students' needs, etc.  Sometimes it felt like small schools were being pushed and rewarded at the expense of us larger, more traditional schools.  It was hard to hear the district administrators say that they didn't have money for whatever particular program/supplies we needed when I knew they were spending a lot more to start these new small schools.  Many larger schools were divided up into small schools since that was considered to be the best model. Now the district has decided that small schools cost too much money . According to staff’s calculations, the minimum n...

A little light reading for you from my district (or, Things I Have Been Meaning to Post About But I Went to Cajun Country Instead) Budgets for various schools Schools where black students are "thriving" Closing schools with poor attendance The Reading First Program might not be great Exclusive "hill" schools

Apparently one way to prepare for standardized tests is to racially segregate kids and hold rallies that way? I don't know about that...

If you still don't believe me that NCLB stinks , read this. The first part of this very interesting three-part series on NCLB talks about how schools (and districts and states) are trying to get around the law, by using track and field analogies . One interesting point is that schools have to raise the percentage of kids passing the tests each year. My school got to the point three years into NCLB where it was statistically impossible to meet the NCLB benchmarks the following years. You can see how this increased the "why bother?" mentality. Some schools and districts are setting the early benchmarks very low to get around this. There are other ways that districts are fudging the numbers . Some states are just setting the pass rates lower. Illinois lowered the score on an 8th grade math test and the pass rates rose from 54 to 78 percent. Mississippi has the highest passing rate for the fourth grade test in the country... on the state test. On the federal test, they...

An email from one student: I am so HAPPY all the tests are finish. I will act better in class and shool. I Promiss. The reason I was not that good was because all the tests made me think that you are letting tham make us suffer. Will now that the tests are away I feel real good. I'm using this quote for anyone who doesn't know why I'm leaving teaching. Because the kids think my job is to make them suffer, not to help them learn. Later, I got another nice email from the same girl: sure and I know you dont.When I see your meggesses I am so happy.Cause it is great when you know your teacher loves you bye

And believe me, there are only three! 1. The school gives us enough pencils for every kid, and they're pre-sharpened. 2. The kids get snack so they're not hungry until lunch. (Well, for the first few days, they do, until the school inevitably runs out of money for this). 3. I can lock the door and no one comes in to tell me I'm off schedule or that I have no student work up. The tests are dragging them down now. I got a note from one girl that said, "I hate the test so munch the test make people sad and mad that's why I hate test because there are answers that are really hard and stupid." She didn't used to feel this way about tests. All the assessments taken up until this point; reading, math, spelling, etc. were seen as fun - she liked taking them, she usually did well, and she never freaked out. Today I had one child get sent home, three more whose mothers were called, and about seven more who got in some sort of trouble, and all of it started with...

Trying to have my prep time - on minimum days after the kids are gone and I finally have some time to myself to work or whatever - while there are constant announcements over the loudspeaker, every 10 seconds. "Johnny Smith, come to the office." "Teachers, dont' forget that the back gate is locked." "We are making this announcement just to create noise and drive you crazy - it's part of our evil plan." Having "optional" meetings that aren't so optional during my prep time, which is supposed to be left pure and unadulterated and for MY use. Getting memos and announcements over the loudspeaker that teachers are not allowed to leave campus during our prep time. Which would make sense if the kids were still here and we needed to be around in case the prep teacher had an issue with them. But when it's after school, the kids are gone, and I have to be back for a meeting, what is the harm in me going to get a coffee...

I need about a month of this before I am going to feel un-tired again. During Christmas vacation, it wasn't until the last Sunday of the two weeks that I began to feel rested. And I had to go to school the next day. ------------------------------------ I have applied for a leave of absence for next year. I am exhausted. And it's mostly not because of the kids. I am tired of the crazy amounts of paperwork we have to do. I am tired of the ludicrous testing that requires me to do so much more paperwork, as well as making the kids cry because they think they're not smart enough. I'm tired of being given a 30 minute lunch and being told that's enough time for me to walk the kids to lunch, go to the bathroom, eat lunch, and prepare for after lunch. I am tired of sending kids to the office after I have exhausted every possible disciplinary action in the classroom only to have them sent back because there's no one to deal with them (we have THREE administr...

...whether or not anyone's listening. My letter (also known as career suicide) to the people in charge of "Research, Assessment, and Accountability" in my district. Also known as the department that makes my kids take so many tests. (They're not responsible for the state testing, only for the mountains of district testing heaped on top of the state testing). I may be blacklisted now, but there are some times that - even if it's just for my own sake - I need to say what I know to be true. Dear XXX, I am a 3rd grade teacher in this district. I have just finished giving my students the mid-year math assessment and mid-year language arts assessment and I have a number of concerns that I hope you can address for me. First, this is the second math assessment this year which covers standards not yet scheduled to be taught. In particular, this mid-year assessment - with a testing window of Jan 22-26 - covers geometry, scheduled to be taught from Jan 22 - Feb 9. Amo...

I was talking to a friend the other day and trying to figure out why I am keeping up this blog. Part of me wants to show off my kids, how cute they are, what funny things they say. Part of me wants people to know what I'm going through with my ridiculous, dysfunctional district. But if that's all it is, I don't think I'd continue writing - I have a lot of other things that should be taking up my time. I think my main hope is that people will read this and understand that things are not OK in education in California . And more than that, I want people to get MAD about it. Most of this is detailed in previous entries, but there is severe inequality in our schools. If you (or anyone else!) doesn't believe me, read my blog, read Jonathan Kozol's books, come visit my school. The inequality is so entrenched that I honestly have no idea what can be done about it at this point, but I do know that nothing that has been done is working. No Child Left Behind isn't wor...

Oakland Unified and No Child Left Behind are ruining my students' education. That may sound dramatic, but it's true. And I'm pretty close to just walking away. We got another math assessment from the district that covers what we haven't taught. The first one covered types of word problems that were supposed to be taught a few weeks after the test was due. This one covers geometry, which is a unit we are just starting (and we're taking the test this week), including questions on the types of triangles, which are not supposed to be taught until the SECOND WEEK OF FEBRUARY. The test is due on Jan 29. We're back to time traveling , I see. Let me point out that the same department made the schedule of lessons taught and the test. Big problems. This is not the only problem. The testing schedule has gotten unbearable . Let me explain. There are four types of tests that we are mandated to give, not including any teacher-generated assessments that might actually help ...

About a month ago, the district gave us a math assessment (I think all the elementary schools in the district got the same one). We were told to administer them in the next week. Then, after some people had already given them, we were told not to administer them because the answer key was incorrect, and the test covered chapters that we were not scheduled to teach yet. There was a big scramble to get a refund from the publisher and get all the tests back. They forgot to retrieve mine. This week, we got the new ones. This delay has created problems with scheduling as well as report cards, so we were all glad to administer the assessments. The smaller problem, the incorrect answer key, was corrected. The bigger problem, that the children are being tested on things not yet taught, remains. The test is exactly the same as it was before all of the efforts to fix it. No one in the district seems to think it's a problem that we're testing kids on things they haven't ...

As I'm looking through all these old emails (I decided it was silly to have six different email accounts so I'm going to get rid of the hotmail one; cleaning it out), I keep finding great stories from previous years at school. This is one of my favorites. There was this kid, "Tommy ." He was in my class in my first year, when I taught first grade, and also in my third grade class two years later. Although having a really really hard life which included an alcoholic mother, no father, an extremely abusive stepfather, and eventually getting taken away from his mother and stepfather because of this, he somehow retained some innocence. He would tell jokes like this: Tommy: "How many space boots did the cow have?" Me: "I don't know, how many space boots?" Tommy : (laughing hysterically) "Five: one for each foot and one for its tail!" Me: "Tommy, did you make that one up yourself?" Tommy : (proudly) "How did you guess?" ...

OK, for all my whining about teacher appreciation week, I got appreciated today. By one of my former students. He came in when we were in the middle of a test and I said, "Marcel, you're not supposed to be in this building during testing." (Someone suggested using aliases for the kids because it makes the stories easier to remember and more personal, so I'll try that.) He said, "Oh, I just wanted to bring you something." The something was a little stuffed Taco Bell dog that says, "Feliz Navidad, amigos," when you squeeze it. It looks like it's been well loved - I'll put a picture of it up later. I asked him what it was for and he said it was for Teacher's Day! And he's not even my student any more. Later, the class had a little conversation that also made me feel appreciated. D'Anthony called some girl ugly, and the girl was sad, and I said that if someone were to call me ugly I'd just think to myself, "Well, I know I...

We're taking the standardized test right now - and let me say that whoever thought it was a good idea to give eight year olds a really long, hard, scantron test obviously never had to administer it. I mean, I'm all for accountability, but this test is approximately FOURTEEN hours long for third grade (some parts of it are untimed, so it varies a little) over two weeks. It's ridiculous. I gave them special pencils for the test and told them that these were their "magic pencils." I was mostly kidding, but they totally bought into it and are asking me how I made the pencils magic, and telling me that the magic pencils really do work. One kid told me today that he was "being a pain" because he gets stressed out during the test. It's true - they all of a sudden have more needs than ever because they're worried and feel inadequate. And this group is needy to begin with! The minute the test gets passed out, they are all hungry, have to go to the bathroo...

Next Week (May 7-13) is Teacher Appreciation Week. Tuesday, May 9 is National Day of the Teacher. Appreciate a teacher, please. Once we got appreciated by our principal from that year (long gone, thank the Lord) for Teacher Appreciation Week. It was pretty classy - a generic crooked photocopied appreciation certificate that she forgot to sign. If you have kids, please do something nice for their teacher. Just a little note or something. Especially because for many of us, Teacher Appreciation Week is also Standardized Testing Hell Week, Part II.