Welcome to Talk of Talk of the Nation.

On today’s show, the topic was Standardized Testing. The show was broadcast, before a live audience, from Aisquith Lecture Hall at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. Today’s show was produced in association with the PBS program Frontline: On March 28, FRONTLINE returns with “Testing Our Schools,” a special report in which correspondent John Merrow examines how increased standardized testing, mandated by President Bush’s sweeping education-reform bill, stands to change teaching and learning in America.¹ At least some of my interest in this program was due to the fact that my mother and some of my friends are teachers.

They split the show into two topics, one for each hour of the program; each hour had its own panel of guests:

  • Hour 1: What Are We Trying to Measure?
    John Merrow – Former teacher; Host of the PBS series “The Merrow Report;” Author
    Jeff Howard – Founder and President of the Efficacy Institute
    Dan Koretz – Professor of Educational Assessment, Harvard Graduate School of Education
    Premise: “In 1983, a landmark report “A Nation at Risk” warned that America’s schools were failing. Standardized tests became the answer. And now nearly 2 decades later, all fifty states have adopted some form of standards and standardized tests.”²

    Some of the questions raised included:

    • Since each state uses different tests, what are we measuring? Students? Teachers? Schools?
    • Are we measuring the same thing?
    • What is “fair?”
    • What is “best?”
    • Are we on the way to national standards and tests?
    • What do we have to do to change to get students to a higher standard?

    One panel member made the observation that “Tests should be the instrument that help students learn better.”

    Mr. Howard noted: “If you don’t have accountability for the students, on these tests, you discover that the kids don’t take it seriously… I believe that there have to be consequences for students, to motivate them to do the work they need to do to become proficient in reading and mathematics and science.”³

    Mr. Merrow commented that he thought that schools should be built and run like highways: “The education system ought to be designed the way we build highways: You build highways with a margin of error on either side; the car could swerve a little and you don’t have a crash. What we want, when we build that highway, is to get to the destination. That’s the way we ought to conceive of an education system. Our goal is to get the kids there and let’s figure out what we need to do to get each kid there. Whether… we may require different kinds of training or interventions, not a test which is a ‘Gotcha! You fail!’ “4

  • Hour 2: How Is Testing Changing Teaching and Learning?
    James Caradonio – Superintendent, Worcester (MA) Public Schools
    Linda Nathan – Headmaster, Boston Arts Academy
    Paul Reville – Chair, Massachusetts Education Reform Review Commission; Lecturer, Harvard Graduate School of Education; Executive Director, The Pew Forum on Standards Based School Reform
    Premise:“This past January, President Bush signed an education bill that requires states to test student performance ANNUALLY in reading and math from grades three through eight. Do standards help students improve, or do they just learn to take tests? “5

    A couple of the issues that I took note of were:

    • Does the testing help or hinder?
    • The problems of hiring – and retaining – teachers.

    I wasn’t overly impressed with Ms. Nathan as a panelist; I wasn’t alone in this assessment. Her attitude seemed to be rather haughty, bordering on ‘holier than thou.’ She seemed quite willing to talk about the public school systems while extolling the virtues of her school… and how hard she worked to get raise money to have a company come in and assess her school. When the point of whether or not it was possible to get students motivated and interested in school and testing, she said,”I can get my students to take anything seriously.” Julia and I just stared at each other after this comment.

    An audience member, who works in an after school tutoring program, said that just before the MCAS (Massachusetts’ standardized test) is given, that the number of students who come to the program diminishes sharply. She posed:”Since students who don’t do well on standardized tests need to spend most of their time struggling to work in areas that they’re already not good at, and no longer have time for extracurricular pursuits or to take the specialized courses that they are interested in, aren’t we first of all taking them away from life rather than preparing them for life and testing their success in life; and doesn’t it ensure that the students who don’t test well will never enjoy school because they can’t focus on the areas that are interesting to them or ever excel because they can’t take the classes that are particularly compelling to them?”6

    Ms. Nathan’s response: “I would like to try an experiment: I would like, instead of this high-stakes standardized testing, to force (note: that was her emphasis, not mine) every child, K – 8, to take an instrument every year. Required music. (enthusiastically) What would that do?!” When she was asked “How would you test them,” she retorted, “Would we need to?”7 *boggle* My mother is a choral music teacher and one of my best friends is a band and drum corps instructor. Trust me when I say that not everyone is musically inclined. Nine years of forcing someone to play an instrument? I think not.

    Let me go on the record as saying that while I do respect her accomplishments and the work that had to be done to attain her current status, I find found her lacking in tact, decorum and the social graces.

Update: I neglected to mention something yesterday – While testing the new Olympia, WA flats system, one of our technicians (Toad) and two techs (Dale and another gentleman) from Western Area HQ came to my workstation to make sure that things were working properly. At the time, no mail was coming across the system, so I was drawing. Toad mentioned that I had been working on a logo for him; Dale asked me to try and come up with something that could be used for Western Area Automatic Flats Remote Encoding Centers (AFRECs). Challenge in mind and pencil in hand, I took a couple of tries at it. A short while (and no mail) later, I had three ideas worked out; I showed them to Dale when he came back over to check my system. He looked at my sketchbook and asked if he could borrow it for a few minutes. I said that was fine and he disappeared. Toad told me later that it seemed as though he really liked one of the designs and not to be too surprised if I saw it on shirts and other items in the near future! Kick grass!!!

Quotes of the Day:

  • “The yelling will cease or the killing will commence!” -The Big Giant Head/”Stone Phillips” (William Shatner), 3rd Rock from the Sun
  • “I’m so depressed, I can’t even blink.” – Bill Dauterive, King of the Hill

And on that note (Remember: “Required music!” *twitch*), I will call it a night.

Peace.

¹ From PBS’ Frontline website
²–7From NPR’s Talk of the Nation website.