On Monday my Advanced Placement students sat for the US Government and Politics exam. I saw most of them later that day, but we did not talk about the examination in any detail. We are not supposed to until 2 days later (today), so I know what our topic will be for class today. Also, I will be able look at the sheets that gave them their four "free response questions" (FRQs) representing 1/2 of their test. They have already told me that in general they felt prepared, but that there were two FRQs which we had never discussed (that can happen).
Yesterday all of my students, AP and regular were working their way through released questions from previous High School Assessment (mandatory state) tests. Thye will sit for that May 25. In other words, I am no longer teaching, but preparing my students for high stakes tests. This diary is a reflection upon that.
The AP tests are really only medium-stakes. For some students they will determine whether or not they receive college credit for the course (which is only a semester course which we spread out over a year since most of those taking it are 10th graders). As of next year those taking the course will be required to take the test. For one ting, it ups the rating of the school in Jay Mathews' "Challenge Index," although I don't think that is a major driving factor. Since we giave a weighted grade (numeric equivalent of leter grade x 1.2)in an AP class it seems logical to require the culminating event. Not all students can get college credit, even if they get the maximum scaled score of a 5, because lthey will graduate with too many APs (some over 10) and many colleges limit the number of courses for which they will give you credit (although I had one young lady graduate with 5s on 13 exams, and graduate from Johns Hopkins with a Masters in 3 years). HOw the students do is of course something of a reflection on me, although I don't obsess about it. These are bright kids and they will do decently.
The state test is something else. It is high stakes. For the class of 2009 (this year's sophomores) on they have four of these they are supposed to pass in order to graduate from high school. Half of my students are in my AP classes, and as they discovered with the sample questions yesterday, achieving a passing score will be relatively easy for almost all of them (I have two who hae not been doing the work, whose performance is a question mark - they SHOULD still be able to pass, but on a bad day they may not). Most of my non-AP students will be taking either 3 or 4 of these tests in 5 days. My test is the end of that 5 day period, which means I will not see them for most of that week. And while I have prepared them well, I cannot guarantee that more than half of them will pass. I am using the released items to review - it is not just identifying the answer the state wants (which is not always a correct answer), it is using the material in the distractors (wrong answers) to help firm up their understanding of material.
And in Maryland the test is NOT all multiple choice. Out of the 56-58 questions on the various forms of the test, most students will see around 5-6 Brief Constructed Responses (about a paragraph will normally answer these ( and one Extended Constructed Response (these can go several pages, although they are not formal essays). The real problem is getting students to write in a fashion that earns them points given how these are scored.
Let me emphasize - for neither the FRQs on the APs nor the Constructed Responses on the state test does a student necessarily get credit for good writing. Grammar does not matter. There is no need for either a topic sentence nor a conclusion. In some cases you do not even need to write in complete sentences. And given the stakes involved - medium on the AP and high on the state's HSAs, I am confronted with the contradictory task of preparing my students to do poor writing in order to score well on the test. I will return to this in a moment.
The multiple choice questions on the AP are almost always of high quality. And, like the SAT, there is a correction for guessing: there are 5 answers, and it is the number correct minus 1/4 the number wrong. If you can eliminate one answer guessing has a marginal positive answer, and if you can eliminate two you really should answer. ON the state's HSAs there is no correction for guessing, so I have to encourage my students to answer every question, even if they have no idea of the answer. Further, there are often multiple answers or no answer that is technically correct - the answer the state might want is the Brown v Board overturned Plessy, even though it did not. The students have to look at all the answers and take the one that stinks the least.
In the case of the HSAs, I believe I have a moral obligation to prepare my students to do well on the test, even though it is of poor quality and not an accurate indication of what they actually know. Since, like the AP, it is a timed test, to a degree it is a measure not of the depth of a student's knowledge but of how fast a student can get through the material. Multiple choice on HSA are mixed in the same session (there are two) with constructed responses, so a student who is a slow writer can be punished severely. I teach them to do all the multiple choice questions and then go back and do the constructed responses. And I teach them to write for a score on the constructed responses, not to write well, which can be time consuming.
I am lucky in that I teach government. Our test will be used to evaluate the school by the state, and of course it has high stakes for the students. But the algebra and english tests they will take earlier in the week are used for determining Adequate Yearly Progress under NCLB, and the pressure for students to do well on that is exceedingly high. Oh, and by the way, the constructed responses on the English test are supposed to be proper writing, so the preparation I and their English teachers give them are at cross-purposes, as they have to be if the students are to do their best.
Most of my students outperform their actual knowledge on the state test - knowing how to approach the test, beng "test-wise" and answering all the questions even if they guess is far easier than the tests they usually do for me, where they have to provide the answer, not merely ascertain one out of four choices. Still, I am seeing indications that this year my students will not do as well as in past years. For one thing, they are sick of all the tests - we have to give them quarterly benchmarks provided by the county also using released questions. Thewy have packets they are required to do over their vacations as preparation for the tests. I will tell you that as soon as they walk out of that last state test on May 25 most will mentally start to shut down, even though we will still have almost 3 weeks of school. We are required to give them an additional final exam - for my AP students that will be their third big exam in the space of about 5 weeks. I give them a takehome essay exam to take off the pressure, and I do a culminating project that is open enough that students can give me evidence of having learned in ways other than writing (they are NOT allowed to do an essay).
Right now I feel conflicted. I am no longer teaching content, or even how to learn, and I am not challenging my students to think. For several weeks I am preparing them to take tests. Both they and the school are somewhat dependent upon the results of these tests, so I have an unavoidable responsibility to prepare them to do as well as possible. I try to mix in fun activities: jeopardy competitions, team competitions, and the like. But while I accept that I must prepare them to do well, I fail to see how this exercise demonstrates anything beyond how well they do on the tests, and I view much of what I am now doing not up to what I consider appropriate professional behavior. That is, what I am doing is NOT in the best LONGTERM interests of my students, even as it is of paramount importance in the shorter frame.
It is springtime. Some days the weather is achingly lovely, and yet students are confined to classrooms preparing for tests. In some cases they are learning a few things that slipped by them earlier in the year. They are practicing the skills that will enable them to be more successful on these tests. And they are getting increasingly turned off to school. The behavior problems are exacerbated by the emphasis on doing well on the tests. And school increasingly becomes a place of drudgery, not of the excitement of learning. Most new learning has now stopped.
My students are not dummies. They know what is happening to them. Many of them resent it. But they resent it far less than do their teachers. I am not alone in feeling as if there is something greatly perverse in the idea that in order to demonstrate "is our children learning?" we stop learning and do test prep. It is as if all that matters is the scores on one test one day out of the entire year (or, 4 tests in 4 different subjects, some of which ask for contradictory skills to be applied).
With my AP kids we will go over half the test today. That will give them some sense of how they did, since most feel fairly comfortable about their performance on the separate multiple choice portion of the AP test. They will get their individual scores in July. They will not get back specific results, that is, they will not know how they did on any particular question, nor will they receive an analysis by subdomain of their performance. All they will get is one number, from 5 down to 1. And on the state test? The scores will be back sometime in the Fall. They will similarly receive one scaled score that will tell them if they passed or did not pass. Neither they nor we their teachers will receive any information that tells us what areas were problematic. A year in the course will be reduced to one number, and we teachers are not even told how that number relates to the specific performance on test - that is, how many multiple choice questions did they get right, how well did they do on the various constructed responses? We get no feedback that enables us to better prepare the next cohort.
Students and testing - they know what is happening to them. Some shrug it off. Some view it as a challenge. Some shut down. All I can hope is that a bad day on a high stakes test does not persuade the student that s/he is a failure, and an exceedingly good day does not begin to turn that kid into someone arrogant.
Welcome to the wonderful world of school, unfortunately decreasingly a place of learning and excitement, and by this time of year a place of tension and anxiety and of preparing for tests.
Peace.