We are in the season for NCLB mandated testing: the Colorado Sudent Assessment Program tests began this week.
We received the following e-mail from Elder Son's school:
This is just a reminder that next week begins our CSAP Tests. They will begin on Tuesday, March 6th and run through Thursday, March 15th. Please try to have your student in school and avoid any medical appointments if possible. Please encourage your students to eat a good breakfast, get plenty of sleep and be on time to school. The testing will be from first through third period. Students will receive a small mid-morning snack. We want to encourage all students to please bring a water bottle. The water must be in a clear container. (emphasis added)
WTF? "The water must be in a clear container?" Well, that one really baffled me. Why the fuck would the school care what kind of goddamned water bottle the students carried? Could they perhaps think students were smuggling answers inside opaque water bottles?
My friend Carol is a school librarian in the district, so I asked her The mandate for clear water bottles is to prevent students from smuggling in soda, because the bubbles would be visible in a clear bottle.
And why no soda? Well, because the sugar might negatively impact test scores!
A couple of years after the CSAPs were instituted, Denver changed its school calendar so school would start in mid-August rather than after Labor Day, as had been traditional. Now, Denver in mid-August can be quite hot, but few of our schools are air-conditioned. With the traditional school year, it wasn't that great of an issue — school started after 100° degree days had passed. In mid-August — well, water bottles again come into play, this time frozen ones to help the students stay cool and hydrated in over-heated classrooms. But the school year had to start earlier — so there would be two extra weeks of classes to prep for the CSAPs in early March.
However, the timing of the tests is also problematic here in the Front Range of the Rockies. Carol the librarian also shared with me how they dread having a strong change in weather, as that, too, can make the kids somewhat more antsy, and drop scores — but March is our snowiest month.
And look at the rest of that e-mail: Have your child well rested and well fed for the test — shouldn't that be a concern the rest of the year too? No matter what, keep your kid in school for the CSAPs. Don't schedule medical or dental appointments — the CSAPs are more important. If grandma dies, skip the funeral. Nothing takes precedence over the CSAPs.
We start getting these exhortations, via e-mail, voice-mail (and gawd aren't those recordings annoying — one of those systems that string separate words together to sound like a female Stephen Hawking) and flyers, starting soon after the kids return to school after winter break. No other event on the academic calendar elicits such a concern that students to be well rested, well fed, well prepared, and in school. Mid-term and final exams, the due dates for major projects, school choice application deadlines — the events that are of direct consequence to the students, all pass without a single school-wide notice to parents. We're never told at all if and when the Iowa Basic tests (remember those?) have been administered, let alone given a two-month heads up on their approach. Yet somehow, students manage to muddle through, without clear water bottles and mid-morning snacks.
In late February, the Denver School Board announced the "CSAP Pride Campaign", designed by the "Student Board of Education", to create a pep-rally atmosphere for the CSAPS:
As part of their CSAP Pride Campaign, students distributed 2000 posters in high schools stating, "Don't trash the CSAP." Student Board members also spoke with their school staff and faculty about how much influence teachers have on students in putting forth effort on the test. Before the testing period commences in early March, the Student Board is delivering presentations to all 9th and 10th grades either in classrooms or in assemblies. Their message is "You don't have to like it, but don't blow it off. Try your best because our school's scores influence whether students come to this school. The more students that enroll, the more money our school gets, and the better chance we will have good teachers, electives, extracurricular programs, and materials."
While we parents are receiving messages from the schools, the children are also being pressured to do well on the tests. They’ve spent the last several weeks being drilled on content, reviewing test-taking strategies, and doing practice tests. Because his CSAP score last year was barely in the "proficient" category, our elder son was put into a math "review session", instead of having one of his electives this term. As a student in the Highly Gifted and Talented program, the school demands that his score be in the "advanced" range to better reflect on the faculty.
All this effort reveals that NCLB testing such as the CSAPs has little to do about how well our children are being educated. Instead, it's about gaming the system to pick up a point here or there — avoiding punishment for the school through cuts in funding, gaining bonuses under Denver's ProComp teacher compensation system, increasing school enrollment, down to keeping the school open — everything but students actually learning and thriving depends on those damned CSAP scores, trying every little, and not-so-little, trick to nudge them up.
And as to not-so-little tricks? Well, I've only anecdotal evidence. One friend, whose son is now a senior in one of Denver's "under performing" high schools, has heard of poorly-performing students being "invited" to leave school before the CSAPs so as not to drag the scores down — which might explain at least some portion of the high drop-out rate. And my librarian friend, whose K-8 school is in a low-income area of town, tells of children who transfer to her school after winter break, only to transfer back to their old schools after CSAP testing is over.
Enormous amounts of money and effort that could actually be spent benefiting the students is, instead, spent on benefiting test scores. And as to whether insisting on clear water bottles makes a difference, I can think of substances more harmful than sugar to test scores — vodka, anyone? Or, perhaps the students might have flat 7-Up in those bottles — just because the liquid is clear and still doesn't mean it's plain water. I guess the only solution would be to have someone taste what's in every goddamned water bottle. Or, perhaps, provide bottled water to the students.
Or, even better, get rid of the goddamned tests.