Teachers question increased emphasis on TCAP preparation
NASHVILLE — Eighth grade English teacher Victoria Hunt doesn’t begin her classes with a discussion of reading assignments or critiques of her pupils’ writing.
Her Wright Middle School students open practice test books and drill on multiple choice questions.
Like many teachers, she fears the federal government’s push for increased school accountability places a greater emphasis on standardized tests than on basic classroom learning.
“It takes away an extra novel we could read, takes away time from things you feel you’re best at teaching,” she said. “And afterward, it takes away the kids. They’re so weary after TCAP. They’ve been A’d and B’d and C’d to death.”
Schools and teachers develop their curriculum around the multiple-choice exam’s subject areas, and spend a good part of the school year preparing students for the test.
Third through eighth grade students found out how ready they were in the last few weeks as school systems administered the Tennessee Comprehensive Assessment Program exams. The test, given each year between March and April, gauge basic skills in English, language, math, science and social studies.
How well students and schools perform can make the difference in whether a school receives vital federal funding and remains free of state control.
“It makes you or breaks you as a teacher, as a school. There’s a tremendous amount of pressure,” said Tennessee Department of Education Commissioner Lana Seivers.
Across the country, fear of poor student performance has made it “all too common that schools are being turned into test prep programs,” said Monty Neill, executive director of FairTest, a Cambridge, Mass.-based organization opposed to increased standardized testing.
“Teachers are spending large amounts of time preparing students for tests — everything from teaching little kids to fill in bubbles and dropping subjects from the curriculum that aren’t tested to altering the parts that are taught” so they align with what is on standardized exams, Neill said.
A nationwide movement against the tests began about two years ago with boycotts in states like New York, Massachusetts and Michigan. In May 2001, nearly 200 eighth-grade students in Scarsdale, N.Y., boycotted a state science exam with their parents’ blessing to protest standardized tests and the increasing amount of classroom time spent preparing for them.
“Teachers feel it’s inappropriate, it damages the curriculum, it’s having an unwarranted, harmful effect on their teaching — and as a result, on kids’ learning,” Neill said.
But supporters of the federal push for accountability say the tests are essential to knowing where money and effort must be directed to help struggling schools.
President Bush is leading the movement with his No Child Left Behind Act. Under the law, schools failing to improve standardized test scores after two years must provide transportation costs to transfer pupils to better-performing schools. After three years, the schools must offer tutoring. After six years, the schools could be forced to close and reopen with a completely new staff.
In Tennessee last year, the state Department of Education put 98 schools on notice to improve the basic skills of their students in English and math, or risk a takeover by the department.
Seivers says she recognizes there are some “valuable parts” to standardized testing — including an increased emphasis on curriculum — but disagrees with their high-stakes nature.
“Teachers, principals, school districts are feeling the pressure of being put on a high-priority schools list by virtue of a single test,” she said.
For example, officials at Caldwell Elementary School in Memphis — widely acclaimed as a success amid a troubled school system — were recently accused of cheating to boost test scores. Principal Lirah Sabir, who retired following the controversy, is accused of excluding weak students on test days, doctoring answer sheets and banning monitors from classrooms.
“I’m not condoning the actions in the least, but it’s human nature when the stakes are higher for people to find ethical and some not-so-ethical ways to adapt to the pressure,” Seivers said. “… Sometimes things that are this high-pressure bring out the worst in people.”
Hunt says teachers resign themselves to the system. Up until test time, her students spent 20 minutes of their 55-minute class each day working through practice exams and learning test-taking strategies. The booklets explain the four different types of answers on a multiple choice test — the correct answer, the next best answer, the obviously wrong answer and the distractor answer.
Cassie Sebastian, a 7th-grade language arts teacher at Ooltewah Middle School near Chattanooga, also spent a large portion of her classtime each week reviewing for the exams — an agenda with which she doesn’t agree.
“TCAP does not test responsibility, doesn’t test the character of the student, and those are the things we incorporate into the classroom,” Sebastian said.
Seivers, a former teacher and schools superintendent, understands the frustration educators. She says she’d like to see the TCAPs replaced with an assessment system that includes benchmarks, something she says “any good teacher I have ever seen” knows about his or her children.
“They can tell you exactly where students were, where they are and where they need to go in terms of mastery of specific skills,” she said. “Those are the kind of benchmarks we should look at instead of waiting for one high-stakes test.”
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On the Net:
Tennessee Department of Education: www.k-12.state.tn.us