Thompson: No Real Relief From "Teaching The Test" In SOTU

Teachers know how to "take one for the team." Had President Obama chosen to look tough in his State of the Union Address by labeling teachers as pointy-headed intellectuals, or borrowed from Oklahoma’s former Republican governor by calling us "slugs," I would have said that that’s politics. But President Obama should not insult our intelligence by saying that we should "teach with creativity and passion," and "stop teaching to the test," when his policies make it inevitable that more bubble-in test prep will result. Throwing a couple of gratuitous insults at educators would have gotten him the political points he sought.  However, he did not need to condemn our students to more educational malpractice.  So, teachers like me will swallow our anger and help re-eelect our president. Next term, we will work within the system to ameliorate the damage done by Obama's tougher, meaner  version of NCLB.  We will thus do what teachers have always done, shake off the insults, and make the compromises necessary to help kids.- JT (@drjohnthompson)Image via. 

Comments

[Danny]

Randi Weingarten had a different view of the speech (or at least pretended to). As she said on twitter:
"POTUS is rocking it"
"real change in tone- don't bash teachers, and stop teaching to the test"
"thought it was a great speech."
https://twitter.com/#!/rweingarten

[john]

Yes, teachers and their unions must work to make sure that President's SOTU V moves away from the bubble-in madness.

[Bea]

Obama said in different words what Arne Duncan has been saying all along. The tests and the consequences aren't going away. "Creative" teachers don't teach to the test, but they will be held accountable for the results. Ditto the way Duncan attacks schools that have cut back on arts and other programs to emphasize English and Math. He calls them out for setting the wrong priorities and not being "creative".

Anyone who thinks Obama's SOTU address meant a retreat from punitive testing wasn't listening.

[john]

Bea,

You also are right. As with NCLB, the Duncan/Obama policy doesn't require educational malpractice but it provides incentives for malpractice and does nothing to deter malpractice. So, some educators remain creative, even in an age of "reform," while athers give into the punitive, and most are somewhere in between. Similarly some students have benefitted, mostly because of choice, others have been clearly damaged, and most are in the middle. Billions have been wasted and our educational values cheapened. The worst damage, I suspect, has been inflicted on those who the "reforms" were designed to help - poor children of color who remained in neighborhood schools and provided a steady diet of test prep.

[Bea]

John,

You nailed it. And when Mr. Russo in his post about the camps calls out teachers as being in opposition to testing and accountability, he fails to discern that it's *how* the tests are now being used and the stakes attached to them. These are consequences that were never part of the design of our student assessments. THAT is what has gone terribly wrong in the past 10 years.

My kids are about to graduate from high school they have lived the before and after of NCLB. They can name for you the kids that have dropped out because of this climate -- and we live in a district that fiercely protects a "whole" curriculum with credentialed librarians and thriving arts programs (all funded locally, in a low income community). Sad times.

[Ira]

http://speedchange.blogspot.com/2012/01/edu-incarceration-and-big-mac-effect.html
The Big Mac Effect - and - its the teachers' fault: "We know a good teacher can increase the lifetime income of a classroom by over $250,000. A great teacher can offer an escape from poverty to the child who dreams beyond his circumstance." This is the Horatio Alger nonsense peddled by the American right for years. There is nothing wrong with our schools, if only those lazy, unionized teachers were better... poverty would disappear. First, the President bases his claim on a suspect study which does indeed suggest that a "great" teacher (that is, one who raises test scores) might raise the weekly earnings of an impoverished student by almost enough to buy a Big Mac each week.

[doug_eike]

Obama's reference to "teaching to the test" is decidedly offensive. Teachers do teach to the test, but only because the system requires them to do so. NCLB takes a pig-eyed view of education and loses the larger view that makes teaching noble and learning fun. Thanks for the insights!

[Paul Bruno]

The phrase "teaching to the test" means so many different things to so many different people, that I tend to react to it less with disdain than with bemusement.

Genuine question: I tend to assume that the best way to raise my students' scores on state (science) tests is to teach them the required science content to the best of my ability, and then maybe spend a little time making sure they understand how the test works. (e.g., "Bubble in carefully and completely.") Is there really some sort of "teaching to the test" that would do a better job of raising their scores?

I tend to think the answer is "no", so I didn't find Obama's speech insulting. I *also* think teaching to the test is a bad idea, even in self-interested terms!

[john]

The problem is that the Administration's policies have been incentiving teach to the test. If you were at a Turnaround School or a Transformation school, and you expressed your bemusement at teach to the test, that statement would be enough to get you fired. And in my limited experience on this, if you were a Baby Boomer at the top of the pay scale, then expressing bemusement would certainly get you fired and replaced by a 23 year old who would enthusiastically support teach to the test.

[Paul Bruno]

My question was exactly about the extent to which the Administration incentivizes teaching to the test. I realize many teachers and administrators *believe* that "teaching to the test" will raise their scores more than just teaching the required content effectively. But I also think that's not true nearly as often as they think, so there's a real limit to how much blame the Administration should get. At another level of description, the blame often lies with confused teachers and administrators, in my experience.