Praise & Hope

 Tests Are Imperfect But Essential

By Ingrid Sherwood

I have heard Montessorians in public schools argue that state-standardized testing undermines the quality of classrooms because it mandates that students acquire specific knowledge on a specific timeline rather than trusting in the child’s potential to manage his or her own learning in a prepared environment. It jeopardizes the three-year span learning community by focusing on individual grade levels. Furthermore, because state standardized tests are criterion-referenced tests, they often do not produce any new knowledge about students, thereby serving no purpose as a diagnostic tool.

I agree, but I advise: hang in there because it’s getting better!

As a brand new traditional teacher in 1969, my assignment was to teach reading and math to sixth and seventh graders in a small rural Virginia school.

A struggling 15-year-old, sixth-grade boy had been retained three times, but he still couldn’t read.
An illiterate 17-year-old, seventh-grade girl doodled quietly and whispered, “My mamma says I have to stay in school until I’m eighteen. Then I can get married.”

Many students could not add or subtract. Hardly any of the students knew their multiplication tables. Clearly these rural Virginia students had been left behind. Whether scenarios like this transpired in Montessori classrooms or not, I do not know. Regardless, no system of accountability was in place, and accountability was desperately needed.

In 1799, George Washington’s death involved blood-letting in attempts to let diseased blood flow out of his body. Today millions of people scaffold their health and extend their lives by having their blood tested. Sometimes I feel that the testing done in schools today is more similar to blood-letting than to blood-testing.
Nevertheless, although tests go through stages of development toward validity and take time to go from “blood-letting” to “blood-testing,” tests can be useful, quantitative tools.

Since entering the teaching profession, I have seen the shift from no testing to high-stakes testing, in pursuit of valid testing. In which stage is the validity of tests in America today?

Most of our 50 United States are currently developing and implementing K-12 criterion-referenced tests that are designed to test students’ proficiencies in their states’ frameworks and curricula. You can access your state’s curriculum at the Edinformatics curriculum page and make your own determination as to the validity of your state’s test.

I believe that if valid tests are aligned to our curricula then we naturally teach to tests, because aligned curricula and tests reflect each other.

In order to be valid, a test must measure a student’s proficiency on specific important, relevant content and skills. If those are the specific, relevant content and skills on which our students are working, then we should welcome an objective test to measure their proficiency.

Sometimes test scores are skewed, and when states first started implementing tests, it was impossible to identify which students’ scores were skewed and which students’ scores were accurate. It was also impossible to distinguish where the tests were deficient and where the students were deficient in knowledge and skills. Fortunately, as state tests have been sustained, such discrepancies are more accurately interpreted.

The discrepancy for Montessorians is that the Montessori important, relevant content and skills don’t always match states’ important, relevant content and skills.

Here’s the good news. The various disciplines are seeing the light.

Educational Standards of the 1990’s were far too general, often covering spans of grade levels. This year, the National Council for the Teaching of Mathematics (NCTM) produced very specific Curriculum Focal Points for Prekindergarten through Grade 8. Kindergarten Focal Points and Connections are discretely consolidated onto one page. You can view the math standards and Math Focal Points on-line. The National Science Teachers Association (NSTA) is progressing to do the same for Science.

I think this is good news because I believe our Montessori curriculum is so rich by nature of its streamlining and potential for spring-boarding that it is inevitable that Montessori and traditional curricula converge in most areas. By keeping our eyes on the pulse of traditional curricula, Montessorians may seize opportunities to enrich our own.

My main objection to testing today is the large number of tests generally being administered in public school classrooms, thus taking time away from work time. In an effort to be prepared for state tests, school districts or counties have initiated an inordinate number of six-week or nine-week tests in every discipline as formative assessments for the ultimate summative assessments. As Montessori teachers, we do informal formative assessments as part of our instruction and observation on a daily basis. While I consider excessive formal formative assessments detrimental, especially in kindergarten, I have no objection to administering a few valid tests per year.

I view testing as being in its dawning era, similar to when blood testing started to become routine. Aligning curriculum, texts, materials and assessments, including tests, is the current challenge for us as educators.
How do we take the emphasis off testing and test scores?

In the process of attributing valid tests to their proper perspective, we can complain to the powers who over-mandate them. We can balk at the concept of formal testing, or we can express our ideas for the improvement of testing. So, please, hang in there. As hard as it is for me to be patient, it is exciting to witness the age of accountability because, while there remains room for improvement in the area of state testing, fewer children are being left behind.

Ingrid Sherwood is a primary teacher at Monocacy Valley Montessori Public Charter School in Frederick County, MD.