Amy Prime Moore taught second grade in Iowa. Now she teaches fifth grade. She believes too much testing hurts her students. Then a friend asked, How do you know? And she wrote this article for the Des Moines Register.
She writes:
“But then I began to get resentful of the idea that I should even need to offer this proof. Why should I have to do this? Why is it that we can’t take the word of our educators as expert? Why can’t we listen to parents who advocate for their children? Since when do we allow our federal government to dictate what should be local district decisions? We know that the policymakers have their own children in private schools that would never dream of using the harsh testing policies that they force on the children of the public schools.
“Imagine a teacher standing in front of her room full of students shouting at them. “You are stupid! You’re too slow! I don’t care if you haven’t learned this yet, you should just KNOW it by now! I don’t even care what you’re interested in learning. You’ll learn what I say you will learn! Why can’t you figure it out? All of the other kids in your grade are figuring it out! You’ll never be ready for college. You’ll never even move on to the next grade! Who cares if you told me the right answer when you didn’t get to it the way I wanted you to? I don’t care if you’re tired, just sit still and be quiet! I don’t care if you won’t need to know this later in life, just do it! The questions aren’t confusing, you are just dumb! You’re letting your whole school down! No one will help you here so just do it yourself! You are a failure!”
“Would we ask for proof that those emotionally abusive comments would be harmful to a child? It’s doubtful we would, and, hopefully, that teacher would be out of a job. But if we could hear inside the heads of our children, those are exactly the damaging words that those tests are whispering to them every time they are forced to take one.
“So the proof is in the tears of frustration falling from the eyes of kids with heads down on desks. The proof is in the Facebook posts from parents saying that their children hate school when it’s a testing day. The proof is with the kids who ask to get up and go to the restroom just to get away from the relentless questions for even a minute. The proof is with the students who no longer think creatively but simply look for the one “right” answer. The proof is in the need for local and national organizations that support parents who want to find a way to get their children out of assessments.”
She asked her friend: where is the evidence that all this testing doesn’t harm children? She’s waiting.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
From the post: “The proof is with the students who no longer think creatively but simply look for the one “right” answer. ”
This statement resonated with me. I teach at a public high school and a local community college. The current crop of young community college students I have are byproducts of the testing regime created and expanded by NCLB and RttT.
My homework questions are open-ended short essay that ask students what they think and require supporting analysis and information. (History is the subject by the way.) After each class that I’ve taught at community college, students express uncertainty and discomfort with the homework they submit. When I ask why here’s the response I get every time:
“I’m not sure that I gave the right answer.”
When I tell them there is technically not a right answer but rather, they have to make decisions and choices and support them capably and with evidence, their reaction is either relief or exasperation. They are trained to find right answers. Not to have opinions. Not to have those opinions heard. Not to debate the merits of their ideas. Just, find the right answer.
LikeLike
“She asked her friend: where is the evidence that all this testing doesn’t harm children? She’s [stil] waiting.”
Where is the evidence that 13 years of punitive, test-based reform is helping children?
No one will hold their breath waiting for this answer from the reformers.
LikeLike
Educators and researchers want evidence…but the general public (average voters) often form opinions based on gut instincts. It is important to be able to present compelling emotional and common sense arguments. This sort of argument, not an academic study, but compelling anecdotal evidence, is extremely important! Bravo to Amy Prime Moore!
LikeLike
I agree with you. Amy you have great skill in communicating. Students and parents need your voice. Keep writing, post your powerful words in every format availble, including handwritten snail mail to legislators.
LikeLike
Wonderful perspective.
LikeLike
Considering the billions we spend on the damn things, seems to me it should be incumbent upon the test supporters to prove their alleged beneficial effects, not for opponents to prove their harmful effects.
LikeLike
A great point.
LikeLike
Very well put.
And I thank those above that have commented.
In line with the first commenter, Steve K, I would add that high-stakes standardized testing helps prepare young people to be participants in the kind of society where the vast majority defer to their social superiors, their “betters,” the “smart people,” those for whom “leadership is destiny.”
After all, why go to all the fuss and bother of trying to come up with your own answer when you can get the “right answer” by just asking those in charge:
“What should I think?”
Democracy? Sheesh, just ask John Deasy and Cami Anderson and John King and the other educrat enablers of the charterite/privatizer movement—it’s inefficient, time-consuming, and gets in the way of all the creatively disruptive ideas of the “thought leaders” of the “new civil rights movement of our time.”
Caveat: just don’t try to impose those testing/thought mandates on the schools where the children of the leading charterites/privatizers go. To wit, Lakeside School [Bill Gates] or Sidwell Friends [Barack Obama] or Delbarton School [Chris Christie] or U of Chicago Lab Schools [Rahm Emanuel] or Harpeth Hall [Michelle Rhee-Johnson] or the like.
Apparently, they’re too busy being genuine centers of teaching and learning to get with the 21st century—they’re preparing their students for the 22nd.
So one school for mine, another for thine.
Or as Dr. Raj Chetty might say, now there’s the “Michael Jordan” of all hypocrisies!
[Sincere apologies to Michael Jordan.]
😎
LikeLike
Just read this from “Team of Rivals” from Abraham Lincoln in the Lincoln-Douglas debates: “With public sentiment, nothing can fail; without it nothing can succeed. Consequently he who moulds public sentiment, goes deeper than he who enacts statutes and pronounces decisions.”
This article is fitting, I think.
LikeLike
Amy is an old high school friend and I love all that she writes. I am a former special educator turned behavior analyst. I am also a mom to a 1st, 2nd, and 3rd grader. Here is what my 3rd grader had to say last week. “3rd grade is going to be a really long year. We have tests like every day” I looked at his assignment notebook last night and even when they don’t have a test–they are writing in the notebeook about the test they have 4 days from now, 3 days from now, 2 days from now. A Unit 1 math test, reading test, Continents test, COGAT test,and on and on and on. Seriously? Yesterday he had testing written on 3 different sections of his planner. He could have just stayed home, in my opinion. I am fed up and going to email the principal (I know the teacher doesn’t chose this)–I know it will go as far as my email to her which questioned the decision to take recess away from our young learners–nowhere. I have always believed in public schools–but honestly, I am ready to start looking elsewhere. I need an Amy Doak Moore to come teach my children in my home. I worry every day that sending my kids to school does far more harm than good.
LikeLike
As a former ESL teacher, I was forced to subject my New York K-5 students to multiple tests in English and sometimes their native language. It was hard for me as I felt as though I was sending my beginner ELLs to the firing squad. Some students cried, and some tried to sleep. I found myself reassuring them that this test was just to confirm that they needed more help and would NOT decide on their promotion to the next grade, a big concern for all of them. The “native” language tests weren’t much better. Most of my Haitian and Salvadorian children couldn’t read in their native language, but I had to go through the process. What a waste of instructional time!!!!!! I figured that when I left, I was losing 24 mornings of instructional time to mandatory assessment that didn’t tell me one thing I already knew, Also,I had inflicted inappropriate testing on these vulnerable students.
LikeLike
The answer is YES, a very big YES:
To Amy Prime More and anyone else with an open mind who is interested in the truth, YES, there is evidence.
From CRESST, comes this report out of UCLA in collaboration with: the University of Colorado; the University of Chicago; the University of Pittsburgh and the RAND corporation
Part I: Research Evidence on the Negative Effects of High-Stakes
Standardized Testing
1. When test results are given high-stakes by political pressure and
media attention, scores can become inflated, thus giving a false impression of
student achievement.
2. High-stakes tests narrow the curriculum. Tested content is taught to
the exclusion of non-tested content.
3. High-stakes testing misdirects instruction even for the basic skills.
4. The kind of drill-and-practice instruction that tests reinforce is based
on outmoded learning theory. Rather than improve learning, it actually
denies students opportunities to develop thinking and problem-solving skills.
There is a lot more. Just click the link and see for yourself.
Click to access TECH342.pdf
LikeLike
Concluison excerpt:
“Research evidence on the effects of traditional standardized
tests when used as high-stakes accountability instruments is strikingly negative. It would not be far fetched to say that testing in the past decade has actually reduced the quality of instruction for many students rather than improving education. If tests are developed in advance of curriculum change, without teacher training, and imposed externally, with factory-like ideas of how to create scores, then it is likely that new tests will have many of the same pernicious effects as old tests
This report is from 1994 and might as well have been written by Nostradomus at his best.
LikeLike
Hell, why stop at testing? Is there any evidence that compulsory education laws don’t harm children?
LikeLike
I think the parallel question would be whether there’s evidence that “too much” compulsory education harms children.
LikeLike