Before Massachusetts Governor Charlie Baker announced that public schools will be closed for the remainder of this academic year, he stated that he wanted to re-open public schools in May to administer standardized tests that could determine just how much children have fallen behind during the coronavirus closure. Really, I’m not making this up.

As we start with small steps to re-open parts of our society, I’d like to respond to Governor Baker’s idea by returning to the set of blog posts I was preparing back in early March to discuss my objections to the state’s standardized testing system. I am planning a four-part series to lay out my thoughts systematically.

For starters, I begin with an essay I wrote nearly ten years ago after visiting my parents in Florida. It’s amusing, conversational, and quite timely given our experiences of schooling-at-home this spring. In my next two essays I will offer my reactions to testing first as a student and then as a teacher. I will conclude this series by summarizing what I hold as our goals for learning and considering whether and how some outcomes are, in fact, measureable.

Part 1 of 4: The Problem with Testing (as explained to the grandparents)

While visiting my semi-retired parents in Florida, I attended my father’s Current Events class and met many well-informed people. These retired doctors, lawyers, judges, business people, journalists, and diplomats know a lot about everything. However, they have a difficult time talking about education, especially the role of testing in our modern public schools. These are “results-oriented” people, and they don’t see why teachers should fear being held accountable.

This debate has been thoroughly processed, and I hardly feel I have much new to offer. Still, here’s my attempt to explain the problem to the “grandparents” in Florida.

Imagine that you generously offer to host your grandchildren on a special trip to visit you. However, due to timing, they may have to miss a few days of school. Your child says, “They can miss school as long as you make sure that they learn as much as they would have in school. In addition to the reading and math that the teacher sends down, you’ll have to do a few science and art projects with them. You love the shorebirds, the shells, so make sure they learn about these topics. It will be easy.”

Then, the kicker, “We’ll just give them a test when they come home. If they pass, you can host them again. If not, no more independent vacations with you.” A high-stakes test, indeed!

Wise grandparents would know just what to say: “Are you kidding? That’s the dumbest idea I’ve ever heard. I mean, we can have reading and math hour, and we will tell them to do their homework before swimming every day. That’s easy. No problem.”

“And we can take them to the beach. We can identify the birds, and sketch them. We can pick up shells, and even go to the Shell Museum. We can introduce the kids to our friends, The Experts, on shells and birds. No problem.”

“But, you know, we have ten grandkids. Your idea would work easily with two of them. I won’t mention names, but you know exactly which two would come down and see this learning with us as totally fun. They already know their birds and shells from previous visits, and we’d have a blast.”

“The next three, well, you know them, too. They’d go along with our program, and they would repeat the names of the birds to us dutifully. But when they went home for the test, well, who knows how much they would retain.”

“And the other five, well, are you kidding me? One has the attention span of a gnat, the other just wants to swim in the pool, the third wonders when we can get ice cream, and two don’t like being sandy or wind-blown at the beach. You can’t judge us based on how well they do on your stupid test.”

“You can judge us on what we do! Sure! We’ll tell you everything. And we’ll adjust things for each kid. We’ll share the things we love, but when they are not interested, we’re not going to push it on them.”

“Even if we did take you up on this cockamamie offer with the kids who would manage it easily, we’d all still spend the entire week worried about the final test. The vacation would be no fun at all. Forget it.”

Without testing, one might ask, how would one measure the value of such a vacation? The grotesqueness of this question makes the analogy useful. The desire to measure and quantify learning is as annoying to teachers and students as it would be to grandparents and grandchildren.

The goal is not better tests.

Featured photo credit: of wild and free