Going Rogue, Teaching Punk: How Keeping Data Frees You to Teach

Dear Reader,
This is a bit of a rant, so if you're looking for intelligence and some help on PDSA, TSP, or something related, please look to the links on the right. :)

A friend and colleague of mine, Kim Parker, a talented third grade teacher and community organizer, posted an article on her Facebook page, 'North Carolina Teachers for Change'. This is an excerpt:

Passing bubble tests celebrates and rewards a peculiar form of analytical intelligence. This kind of intelligence is prized by money managers and corporations. They don’t want employees to ask uncomfortable questions or examine existing structures and assumptions. They want them to serve the system. These tests produce men and women who are just literate and numerate enough to perform basic functions and service jobs. The tests elevate those with the financial means to prepare for them. They reward those who obey the rules, memorize the formulas and pay deference to authority. Rebels, artists, independent thinkers, eccentrics and iconoclasts—those who march to the beat of their own drum—are weeded out.

“Imagine,” said a public school teacher in New York City, who asked that I not use his name, “going to work each day knowing a great deal of what you are doing is fraudulent, knowing in no way are you preparing your students for life in an ever more brutal world, knowing that if you don’t continue along your scripted test prep course and indeed get better at it you will be out of a job.

Why would any teacher allow him or herself to be reduced to this? Because, at least in this case, the teacher bought into the idea that the test is all-important.

If you allow The Test (and I've always gotten a good laugh that in Virginia they're called SOL s - oh, so perfectly named) to be the only judge of whether you or your children are worth a %$&*, you get what you deserve.

Don't tell me about fear and expectations. You blew all of that off when you drank before you were 21, broke the speed limit, and went all the way with someone you weren't married to. (And, by the way, you didn't go blind, did you?)

We choose which lines we toe.

When you choose to ignore the line, you'd better do it intelligently.

Knowing your material, setting SMART objectives, relentlessly gathering data using a variety of formative, authentic tools, and putting it together so that all stakeholders, but especially kids, understand and can explain what it means and why it matters makes The Test a whole lot less important. It relegates it to where it belongs - one more piece of evidence. 

If you know where each child stands every day, you don't have to deal in Fear of the Unknown. Your data, which includes portfolios, should be snapshots of the efficacy of your instruction all year long, not just the three-week runup to testing. This is powerful. This frees you to teach.

If you've got organized, broad evidence to prove a child is on grade level even if he did freak out on The Test and, for three hours, forgot everything he ever knew, the Dark Cloud of Retention has no power.  

Children who have real teachers learn to think and do just fine on the tests. Do you know a single teacher with strong management and delivery skills whose kids bomb the test? I don't.

Really. The System has figured out that 13-year old fifth graders is a bad dynamic. While I've seen a handful of teachers sent to grades or subjects that aren't tested as a consequence for pulling consistently poor test scores, I've never seen anyone actually lose a job over it, and I've taught 20 years in non-union states. 

Did you want to read the rest of the article? It's here.

Kill the drama. Take control of your data; take back your classroom.