John Merrow has some good suggestions in this essay about the month of May and how to use it wisely and well:
May has been an educational ‘dead zone’ for years. Because of our national obsession with standardized test scores, teachers–particularly in low income areas–spend class time showing students how to guess at answers, giving practice tests, and even teaching children how to fill in bubbles for the standardized, multiple choice ‘bubble’ tests that await them. These activities come with a huge opportunity cost for students, because they are of no educational benefit whatsoever and probably set their learning back; for teachers, they are an insult to their profession. And school districts spend billions of dollars buying, administering, and grading the bubble tests required by their states and the federal government.
When I was reporting I occasionally heard people complaining–in song–about “the morbid, miserable month of May,” riffing off an old Stephen Foster tune, “The Merry, Merry Month of May.” As I recall, the expression surfaced in 2003 or 2004, which is when the unintended consequences of the 2001 federal “No Child Left Behind” law became apparent. Because NCLB penalized schools that didn’t achieve what it called ‘adequate yearly progress’ on standardized tests, many districts eliminated art, music, drama, journalism, and even recess in order to concentrate on ‘the basics.’
That’s when the month of May became a ‘morbid’ dead zone, educationally speaking.
I don’t remember where I first heard the expression. It might have been in the suburban North Carolina elementary school that held ‘pep rallies’ in advance of the upcoming state exams, or in Richmond, Virginia, where a veteran middle school teacher told me “Teaching and learning are done; now it’s all test prep.” Or perhaps it was the Chicago high school teacher who confessed that he vomited in his wastebasket when he saw his students’ scores, or the custodian in a Success Academy charter school in New York City who said he rinsed out classroom trash cans every night because students regularly threw up in them during testing. Another possibility is the Washington, DC, parent whose young son couldn’t sleep because his teacher said she’d get fired if they didn’t do well on the tests.
The good news is that May 2020 does not have to be ‘morbid,’ ‘miserable,’ or ‘malignant.’ Because schools are closed and state standardized testing has been cancelled, May is a blank slate–and an opportunity for us to make it ‘magical’ and ‘memorable.’
News reports indicate that many parents are unhappy in the role of ‘teacher at home.’ (They are also coming to realize just how hard it is to be an effective teacher!) Teachers are frustrated because nothing in their training prepared them for teaching remotely. And so, because the March-April experiment in ‘remote learning’ hasn’t been a rousing success and because May is a tabula rasa, let’s embrace ‘out of the box’ thinking. Stop thinking like educators whose jobs depend on high test scores. Think differently!
(An earlier blog post about librarians, swimming instructors, highway engineers, and gardeners is here.)
Imagine for a moment that you don’t have a captive audience (because right now you don’t). IE, think like a librarian. Public libraries are different from schools in one important way: they do not have required attendance. But even though no one is forced to attend the library, library usage continues to climb. To survive and prosper, librarians have had to identify their audiences and find ways to draw them into their buildings and electronic networks. For the most part, they’ve succeeded without pandering. That’s what’s called for in education at this moment.
I hope some teachers will see this test free time to engage students in real learning that includes real reading, writing and thinking. These are life skills, not test skills. I hope teachers explore creative and innovative ways to get students to do this. Peter Greene recently posted a whole series of articles on why we should be teaching literature. He does an excellent job of explaining how the study of literature applies to the real world and how it enhances critical thinking.
I feel sorry for those that have only taught since NCLB. Teaching before this era was much more rewarding and creative. Even if districts required students to take standardized tests, these tests were like a litmus test, not a high stakes tests that determined the fate of students, teachers and schools. We need to restore sanity to public education. We need to allow teachers the opportunity to hone their craft and get off the high stakes treadmill of test and punish.
OK, Mr. Merrow. Thanks for this. But it is March, not May that is crunch time for test prep. The window for high-stakes testing is April, wks 2-4. Then comes the three week period when students know that the year is over.
Before testing, we had to work like coal heavers to get students to do anything in the spring. We fought spring sports. We jousted with field trips. We battled the tendency of all human beings to let down toward the end of the prescribed time. Back then, May was a wash. After testing, March through May is a wash.
And I am not even counting the times teachers give up instructional time during the year with ongoing assessment required by their superiors.
Exactly right, Roy.
In New York, March/April is the month for testing.
a key point: once testing was pushed punitively into schools, not only did kids get a tightly narrowed school experience, they actually lost months of spring instruction