by Rob Vischer made the very good point, in response to my previous blog post, that the education debate is too easily reduced to slogans, and that the situation “on the ground” is more complex. He doubts whether national educational directives make much sense. As a former high school teacher I have a lot of sympathy with his position. From the worm’s eye the view is very different indeed. But since our public schools are now thoroughly addicted to federal money, that money will invariably and even necessarily come with strings. Just this week the Department of Education rolled out a proposed new set of strings – a veritable web of strings – in the name of proposed grade-by-grade common standards.
I’m going to duck, for now, the question of whether standards should be common across the nation. Massachusetts authorities are objecting that the standards are much weaker than their own; Texas authorities are declaring Texas independence all over again; and my friends in the homeschool world are issuing dire warnings about a new threat to educational autonomy. They all have excellent points. I’d like to make a different one.
Although I glanced through all of the standards, I focused on the blessedly short “Reading Standards of Literacy in History/Social Science” for the grades I taught history, government and economics: 9-12. I was pleasantly surprised. The standards included none of the usual rhetoric about first identifying and then adapting to each individual student’s socio-ethnic background and learning style (an admirable goal, perhaps, but one with a stratospheric opportunity cost), and instead refreshingly suggested that students should be able to “cite specific textual evidence to support analysis of primary and secondary sources, integrate quantitative or technical information presented in maps, time flows, and videos with other information in a print or digital text; read informational text independentlyt, proficiently and fluently, synthesize ideas and data presented graphically” . . . and so on. At least on a first reading I have no quarrel with these standards.
What is missing is any suggestion of what content students should be expected to master. Afterthe debacle over the national history standards in 1994 this may be a wise choice, but it begs a very important question. What will be on the test? The Department of Education promises – threatens? – to produce national tests. If the standards are a reliable guide, these tests will, like the social studies section of the ACT, attempt to identify students’ ability to interpret texts and data, and not attempt to identify students’ actual knowledge of history, geography, government, or economics (which are, at least in my school, the core social studies courses).
And that, unfortunately, will make it harder to teach to the test.
Since commentators of almost every ideological persuasion condemn No Child Left Behind for encouraging “teaching to the test”, I’d like to put in a good word for this educationally valuable function . . . with a few caveats.
For most of the past decade, I taught to the test, or more specifically, to the AP European History, AP U.S. Government, and AP Comparative Government tests. Like every AP teacher in America, I bitched about the tests. The College Board wanted us to cover too much material. They wanted us to cover the wrong material ( in fact I’m working on an article about why the elmination of military history from AP European History has distorted students’ understanding). The relentless pacing of the class precluded detours down historical scenic byways and cut short lively debates over the day’s headlines.
So be it. Teaching to the test, or more specifically teaching to give students a fighting chance to score well on the test, was good for my students. It was good for me as a teacher as well. I had to begin each year with a tight schedule and stick to it. Since students and teachers share a temptation to slow the pace and take the occasional (or not so occasional) breather, this provided valuable discipline. I might not agree with all of the content that the College Board prescribed, or failed to prescribe, but I agreed with most of it. Moreover, I had to make sure that all of it got taught, and I had to try to make sure that most of it got learned. Students might grumble, but if they wanted the college credit they needed to learn the material and then review it, rigorously, in the final weeks before the test. Since the tests included essay as well as multiple choice questions, map and graph interpretations, and, in the case of AP European History, critical interpretation and synthesis of primary and secondary sources, students needed to develop critical reading skills as well as absorb and regurgitate information. In other words, for all their shortcomings the AP tests encouraged students to meet the proposed national standards and actually absorb some information about history or government.
There was one other great advantage of teaching to the test. It gave my students and me a common objective and a common enemy. We both wanted the students to score well. And we were both pitted against the College Board. Although I was the teacher, I was NOT the final arbiter of success. Pandering to students by easing up might win me some short term approval, but neither students nor parents would thank me in the long run. Cajoling me would do students no good when their multiple choice answers passed through the scantron and the their essays landed at the table of the dreaded, anonymous AP essay “reader”.
Process-oriented tests are better than nothing. It remains to be seen whether, or how, these new tests will be different from the so often maligned NCLB tests. And I wonder whether the tougher standards – however nebulous – will survive when they reveal, as I predict they will, even more glaring achievement gaps. Stay tuned.
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