Bullying: One Kid Talking To Another About Not Taking A Test
7 min read
While collecting up my thoughts after the Portland Public Schools Common Core event last week, I came across this set of talking points written by the district "as a support to principals and teachers to understand State of Oregon requirements and our practices around testing."
The full doc is available for download from the Portland Public Schools site; I have also stored a copy locally (pdf download). The FAQ is dated February, 2013; it's not clear whether this document is a version that has been updated over the years, or whether these talking points were created fresh in early 2013. If anyone knows the backstory on how and why this document came into existence, please let me know (either via a comment or via the contact form).
The document is written with the OAKS tests in mind. In Oregon, the OAKS tests will be used until the "next generation" assessments aligned with the Common Core are rolled out. Oregon is currently part of the Smarter Balanced consortium, and the tests that Oregon is moving to do not yet exist (although some Oregon school districts have been volunteered to field test draft versions).
The Portland Public Schools FAQ reveals the bind that teachers and principals within the district find themselves. From the FAQ:
The tests are used by the state to rate schools – both on how well students do overall and also on how many students take the tests. If a school falls below 95% participation, the school’s state rating falls. The ratings are made public in the school’s State Report Card and are often used by parents weighing school choices.
In other words, school rankings place an emphasis on test taking - potentially, a school with 100% participation but lower test scores could be labelled "better" than a school with 94% participation and higher scores (and for the purposes of this post, we will not address the valid concern/question of whether the test is an accurate measure of learning - we'll leave that for another day). In any case, the way schools are rated creates a strong incentive for schools and teachers to get kids tested. While I have yet to hear of any hospitalized Oregonians being presented with tests, state and district policies that reward schools for testing kids create the pressure where that type of behavior becomes possible.
The next point in the FAQ addresses how familiarity with test taking helps kids do better on tests:
Most students use the Reading and Writing OAKS tests in 11th grade to meet their high school graduation requirement of showing mastery in these Essential Skills. The Class of 2014 and beyond must also pass Math tests. If students refuse to test prior to the 11th grade, they will have limited familiarity with the testing environment when they first have their opportunity in high school. This could negatively impact their performance and their on-time graduation (emphasis mine).
While no one can dispute that a familiarity with the structure of a test brings a benefit on the test, it begs the question of whether the test measures actual learning, or whether the test measures the ability to sit through a test. Is the point of testing to help students get better at tests? If so, then test away, but I would like to hear any credible educator try and make the case that the point of school should be to learn how to take standardized tests. The fact that this is mentioned in an FAQ on why tests are a Good Thing(tm) feels like either an oversight or really bad advice.
The next section of the FAQ outlines how to respond to a parent's request for an exemption.
For a school to excuse a student under this rule, the parent must provide a written request listing the reasons for the request and propose an alternative learning activity for the student to do during the testing that would meet the same goals as participation in the state assessment. An example of an activity might be that the student work on homework or a special assignment covering the same set of skills being tested.
The school may then consider the parent’s suggested activity but choose instead to engage the student in a different activity that the school determines. The point of having the parent suggest an alternate activity is to help emphasize the educational value and importance of the assessment.
In other words, if a parent opts their child out from testing, the parent should be given some busywork that the school can subsequently ignore; this will teach the parent the lesson that the standardized tests are very important.
If the district thinks that this approach will do anything except anger parents, the people writing these policies should get out more. Most parents of school age kids are busy; giving a busy person a busywork assignment that can be arbitrarily ignored is not a good negotiating strategy, or a good way to foster open communication.
The FAQ also describes how to react if students talk with one another about opting out.
Q: What if students are encouraging other students to boycott testing?A: Principals, teachers and schools must clearly assert that students must not coerce or in any way intimidate other students to share their position or their actions on testing. Schools should follow their anti-bullying protocols to intervene with students who engage in such behavior.
So, if one kid talks to another kid about not taking a test, this should be addressed as a bullying issue? Seriously? This approach demeans any ongoing anti-bullying efforts underway at the school. Bullying is a real issue affecting kids. Opting out of a test, and talking about it, is not bullying. Questioning authority is also pretty natural to kids. Fortunately, I know that most teachers and principals have the sense to not go down this path, but the fact that this is the recommended approach from the district shows a misplaced emphasis on the value of what happens in schools.
The FAQ ends by circling back to the point of the whole exercise:
Q: Does a legitimate exemption or a refusal count against my school’s test participation rate?A: Any student enrolled on the first instructional day in May and for at least one-half of the school year who does not test, regardless of the reason, counts against the school’s participation rate.
To put it another way: if you let kids not take the test, you, your school, and your teachers will look bad. That's how we crunch the numbers.
The existing policies around testing create pressure to test as many kids as possible. Allowing students not to take the test - even for valid reasons - counts against a school's publicly available rankings. It doesn't matter that these rankings aren't an accurate representation of what transpires within the school - once the ranking is published, it's everywhere, affecting everything from parental perception to property values.
With the new, as yet unseen, completely untested Common Core assessments on the way, school districts need to be more candid and more realistic about the actual value of tests. Doubling down on the "tests are valuable and you must take them" approach won't fly, especially when the assessments show some real signs of being unsound. Treating parents who don't want to see their children's time wasted on poorly crafted assessments of dubious value as troublemakers is not a viable strategy. I hope that, within both Portland Public Schools and other school districts nationwide, there is candid, open conversation on the effects of an increased reliance on testing. One of the catchphrases of the accountability-through-testing crowd is "the kids can't wait." If it's a choice between rushing into a poorly crafted assessment, or spending that time engaged in the classroom, I'll choose the second, and wait. My kid can't afford to be rushed into a poorly conceived thought experiment.
