Testing dissidents: School leaders go public with their concerns over the harm of highstakes tests - education

School Administrator, Dec, 2001 by Paul Riede

In effect, he says, many teachers will teach to the test no matter what school leaders say.

"Lots of us say, 'Well, we're not doing lots of test preparation.' But when you go into schools, what you see in fact is almost regardless of what people are saying or what ideally they want, there really is incredible pressure to teach only what's on the test and to give only the kinds of questions that are on the test."

Kitto, the principal in Sarasota, has the same frustration.

"Schools are big places and closed doors are awfully easy," she says. "So the bottom line is they spend a lot of time in test prep. My teachers want their school to look good. There's a lot of pride in the school and they don't want us to be a B or a C school."

Under Florida's system, Kitto's school slipped from an A to a B last year because the percentage of 4th-graders passing the state's reading and writing tests dropped a few points. The rating has no validity, Kitto argues, because a different cohort of students is tested every year. Nonetheless, teachers will feel pressure to raise scores this year.

"Are we going to do those fun science projects? Are we going to take a lot of enriching field trips?" Kitto asks. "We were starting to do some really unusual things in school that took kids outside the classroom and brought subjects together in a way that kids could really understand. Unfortunately that isn't what is going to get them the top scores on the tests."

A Rights Issue

Cala, the superintendent in the Rochester, N.Y., suburb of Fairport, has similar concerns. He says the state's high school Regents exams, now required for graduation, not only limit classrooms explorations, but they openly discriminate against certain students. Some students are simply poor test-takers, he says. Others could succeed in vocational careers even if they didn't pass the Regents exams. Still others are recent immigrants who are bright enough to graduate but not yet adept enough in English to pass the state's English Regents exam.

In addition, Cala says, students in wealthy districts are able to afford the extra preparation they might need to pass the exams, while students in poorer districts are not.

"I absolutely see this as a civil rights issue," he says. "I see it as an issue of extreme discrimination."

Cala is going further than most school leaders in his opposition to the testing system. (See related story, page 12.) Besides participating in a public rally against the system in Albany last spring, he is working with two other superintendents to establish an independent high school diploma. The diploma would be granted not by any school district but by a nonprofit organization made up of representatives of K-12 education, higher education and business. Students would have to demonstrate proficiency through portfolio work and other criteria, but not necessarily by passing Regents exams.

"It's sort of a passive civil disobedience because I am providing a set of options that the state refuses to provide," he says. "I think pure civil disobedience would be not offering the tests, and I'm not going there."