The problem is too many tests, not PARCC

With the 2015-2016 school year gearing up to begin and the first set of PARCC results set to come back this fall, I thought it would be a good time to post this for perspective.

This post first appeared as a letter to the editor in the Chicago Sun Times as a response to Rachel Schwartz's "My testing—I mean teaching—career." 

As a high school teacher, I am often asked by friends and family to explain what’s going on. In particular, I’ve heard a lot of confusion about the new PARCC assessments. It’s time for clarity.

Over-testing should legitimately concern parents and teachers, but much of the coverage on this point has misconstrued what’s actually happening in the classroom. For example, several misconceptions were recently raised by Chicago Public Schools elementary teacher Rachel Schwartz as she described one of her brightest student’s struggles with the PARCC exam. However, Schwartz was clearly more frustrated that CPS requires her students to take three different standardized tests. If CPS were to just focus on the PARCC exam, they would receive all of the information they need about how well students are doing. We must be careful to not over-react to test anxieties by throwing out the baby with the bathwater.

The fact is, the PARCC exam is a tangible way for parents and teachers to see student progress in learning the key skills that will allow them to compete with kids from anywhere in this rapidly changing global economy. Standardized assessments are a way to hold teachers and schools accountable for whether or not students are growing year to year. We need parents to help reinforce this important work at home, but the test allows me to see if I am actually having an impact on my students’ learning.

For example, at the beginning of each school year my students look at their previous year’s test scores and identify specific goals to work on during the upcoming school year. These goals are written by looking at ACT’s College and Career Readiness Standards, which offer suggestions for students to practice so that they get better. As their teacher, I get to watch students take charge of their own learning by setting goals and then working to meet those goals through classwork.

On average, my students’ scores dramatically improve each year. However, under the old assessment, I had to spend time on test prep to ensure students scored well. The PARCC test is designed to closely resemble the same type of reading and writing students should already be doing in class, so I haven’t worried as much about using precious class time preparing for a test. With PARCC, we finally have a standardized test that assesses how students are doing on skills that matter most to success in college and career.

I feel fortunate to teach in a district that has spent the time and resources to carefully write and implement a localized curriculum that meets the rigor of the Common Core Standards and offers kids a core foundation of knowledge and skills. And since I no longer need to spend time on test prep, what students do in my classroom every day meets and exceeds the expectations of the state standards.

Sure, the test is difficult. My class is difficult. But, at the end of the year, students leave my classroom with the knowledge to think carefully, critically, and creatively. Each year I am amazed at the quality of work students produce. High teacher expectations and high state standards are a powerful combination for student success. As a teacher, I want to know that I’m doing all that I can, and a standardized test, like PARCC, designed to mirror what happens in the classroom, is one way that I get that assurance.

Seniors, Citizens, and Being a Person: Teaching 12th Graders in a Writing Classroom

"It must be nice just teaching the good kids."

"Yes, it is."

And that's the exchange I've had for years. There's not really a response that logically follows after this exchange. It is nice teaching "good kids," however you define that. And I define it as kids who are open to learning, respect each other, and respect me. I've taught this dual credit Rhetoric class for 8 years, and before that I taught AP Literature and Composition for 4 years. So I've had the good kids for a long time. Before AP, I taught the "other" kids--and you know what? Those were good kids, too. Especially the seniors, though. 

Having taught exclusively seniors for 8 years--and seniors overall for 13 of my 15 years in the classroom--I enjoy the benefits of being with these kids. I taught freshmen during my first 3 years, and that is just different: they're still poking each other, often haven't decided on a routine bathing schedule, hold hands 3 across in the hallway, and rarely know how to look adults in the eye when holding a conversation outside of class.

Young Giraffe, wikimedia

Seniors are more like year-old giraffes: they are getting their legs under them, figuring things out, learning how to survive. I've had seniors talk to me about how they're quitting smoking, ask me what to say in a job interview when they're asked about their weaknesses, or want suggestions for a good restaurant to go to in Chicago. They're more like real people. Like Han Solo an hour after emerging from the carbonite, they're starting to see things like the rest of us do; they're appreciative; they're anxious to get involved in the next step; maybe they can understand what a Wookie is saying.

So with my seniors, a modest benefit is also that they get out of school before the rest of the students, and while I do look forward to a little time to myself that last week, I look forward to the last day of class with them as well. Most years, Hackney and I say goodbye to our seniors in ways that define who we are in the classroom--he does it with a David Foster Wallace speech,  

I do it with a song I rewrite every year where I gently poke fun at each student, a song that's rarely amusing to people outside of our class (I make a list of every kid so I don't forget anyone...again).   But the seniors get it. It's a fun way to recap the highs and lows and ridiculousness of the year. Before my song, I have them write a letter to themselves that they address (I have to teach this skill explicitly during the third Friday in May every year), and then I mail them in May of the following year. A former mentor teacher of mine Mrs. Brubaker taught me that, but she held them for 4 years. I don't have that kind of organizational capacity. I have them write my email address in the letter so they can give me updates when the get the letters. It's great to hear what they're up to, putting a face to the name and remembering what they wrote about in their essays, what we talked about in the hallways. The exception is the one year I had them send emails to themselves using Futureme.org. I heard an NPR story about it 

For 9 months of our lives, 5 hours a week, we've seen each other. It's not just that, though; as a writing teacher, we get to read their writing. (*Sidenote: I saw Ryan Adams on Austin City Limits recently, and in an interview he explained how once he was complaining to a friend about his busy schedule, and a friend said, "Don't say I have to do these things. Say I get to do them." That stuck with me.) Essentially we are learning who they are a little more with each essay.The first piece of writing we work on in Rhetoric is a narrative. Nothing prepares me for what I'm in for like a narrative essay every August: Edith had to translate and navigate her parents' home purchase with a banker from English to Spanish at age 10; Mike found out his dad was getting a divorce when he mindlessly opened the glovebox at a stoplight--while driving with his dad--and the papers spilled into his lap; Amber barely spoke in a class for months after a teacher told her an idea she had was dumb; Katie wanted to be an Olympic ice skater.

We learn a lot about these kids, these young adults, who are soon about to be a part of this adulthood experience with us--the other adults--in just a few short months. What do we need to tell them? What do they need to know? I feel a good kind of pressure being with 12th graders. For some seniors, the book they read with us in April is the last piece of classic fiction they'll ever read again, so what must we read? I feel a sense of urgency with their writing, like if I don't get them to understand commas this year, they'll echo Sammy's sentiments at the end of Updike's "A&P": ...my stomach kind of fell as I felt how hard the world was going to be to me hereafter. It feels like that when the commas go south. And the pressure isn't just what to read or what to teach them, but just helping them to "be a person," as my library friend has often said to me about what our role really is. Help them be a person.

These 17-18-year-old students are people, and they have stories, stories that don't need to be corrected all the time. Sometimes they just need to be told, and most times they just need to be heard. I enjoy reading them without thinking about making comments. Just reading. Or during some quiet writing time a kid will look up and ask something random, "Newman, did you have a roommate in college?" or "Do you think it's weird if I go alone to prom?" They are thinking of these things. And that's fine. They should be wondering about their college roommate, and they can't help but wonder what others think of them. That's part of being an adult that we never leave behind from our childhoods; or rather, that's part of childhood that we keep with us as adults.

My senior year, four friends and I decided we were going to canoe across the border from northern Minnesota into the Boundary Waters in Canada. We went to the "All-Canada Show" in Rosemont that winter of 1992 and picked an outfitter and the whole thing. I can't tell you how many Candian flags I drew in my notebook during the last 3 months of my senior year. That was on my mind. Whether or not I'd break up with my girlfriend before graduation was on my mind. Singing in my rock band Kindread (the spelling implied darkness and gloom) was on my mind. It's not always a senioritis thing. It's a "this is my life" thing. So I respect that about them when the get a little off track. We just have to help them figure out why getting back on track is important, too.

hairy-nose wombat

The two groups I have this year, 28 in one class and 34 in the other, are classes that I really enjoy. Their research paper topics never cease to amaze me. Hackney and I give them a pretty wide berth when it comes to topics, and what they come back with sometimes are ideas that I could never have imagined. The one requirement is a survey (thanks, Google Forms) or interview (phone/email/personal). This year, I'm learning about algorithms on dating sites; the relevance of music in the deaf community; why entry-level fast-food jobs should be seen as leadership opportunities; why the collaborative efforts of Australia and the US to save the koala, the platypus, and the hairy-nosed wombat are working and what implications that can have for other endangered species. Zack emailed some conservationists in Australia and they got back to him; it's the career he wants to pursue in college.  Each year, these seniors explore topics that I become a 10-minute expert in if I'm making small talk at a party or something* (exception: 10 years ago my student, Manveer, wrote about String Theory. I'm afraid that if someone's making small talk about that, I'll need to find someone who wants to talk about wombats, or hell, I probably shouldn't be at that party; however, to learn more about String Theory, watch this TED Talk).



So all that said, I guess this is where I'm at: there are "good kids" everywhere. Our job as teachers is to get them to learn something about being a person, about being a citizen, and listening to them and reading what they have to say and not giving soul-crushing feedback after they say it, or write it. We're all trying to figure this thing out. But seniors often have a little bit of the humility, if we look hard enough, that's needed to start to figure it out, and when they're asking us how to do it, we at least owe them that much: to just listen and appreciate what we get to do.

Self-Determination Theory in Practice; or, How Do I Make Them Do Stuff?

Self-Determination Theory Chart

Last year, I was excited and wrote a blogpost about a new endeavor as it related to motivating students. Exactly a year ago, my colleague Paul Oswald and I conducted a survey of students at Joliet West to see what motivated them, what didn't, and what we could do to bridge that gap of intrinsic motivation.


We met with an education professor at St. Francis University, Lisa White-McNulty, and she directed us to read up on Self-Determination Theory, originally developed by Deci and Ryan. I asked teachers in the English Department to distribute a survey Paul and I developed, accounting for the three components of SDT: Autonomy, Relatedness, and Competence. What choices did they have? Why is it important? How difficult or easy will it be for me to complete this task? The survey appears below.



We heard from more than 800 students, or roughly 25% or our school population. This was a pretty astounding number for a Google Survey we asked teachers to distribute, but many of them did, and it led to a number of professional development opportunities and opportunities for kids to be taught in ways that may ultimately lead to better experiences in the classroom.

The original post talked about a website, or interviews, or a movie...we were ambitious. It didn't lead to those (yet), but it did lead us to share our results with staff.

It turns out, students don't enjoy packets of worksheets, they want to be respected, they want to understand what they are doing, they want to be interested, they want pizza (the joy of open-ended questions), and they want choice. It wasn't the threat of a bad grade, or the danger of athletic eligibility that motivated them. The tenets of SDT were reflected in their responses.

We were encouraged by the results, and because Paul and I are instructional coaches (we teach 2 classes and work on curriculum, PD, and mentoring the rest of the day), we were asked to create a PD opportunity of our choosing. We developed a 15-hour course on SDT, working with a group of 10 teachers to understand SDT and try to apply what they learned to a unit during the second semester. We asked teachers to create pre- and post-assessment surveys to see how kids wanted to learn first, and then how they liked the way the unit went at the end. Teachers are blogging about their experiences, sharing survey results, and are, ideally, making the experience better for their students.

In addition to the 15-hour version, we did a 90-minute version for more than 30 teachers on an institute day, and we explained the concepts, showed how to make a Google survey, and even explained how this theory can be used by coaches. As a cross country coach myself, I thought about giving the runners a choice in the routes we run (autonomy); about how much harder I can push some of them (competence); about why we need to celebrate improvement more so the workouts are worth it (relatedness).

I have been a participant in this as well, as this year I started doing Genius Hour with my students (read more here or here if you are interested). This totally accounts for Autonomy, Relatedness and Competence, and my survey for the class reflects this. I was able to go weeks into this project without students asking about how it's graded. They loved the choice, and they came up with better ideas for projects than I ever could, but that's a post for another day.

As always, it's encouraging to learn something new and see how it can improve not only our experiences but our students' experiences as well.