Test is a four letter word....

I lived in a bubble- happy, special education-driven private school bubble. We assessed our kids to determine where to go next in our instruction, not necessarily to hold ourselves accountable. We did standardized testing once a year, like all good, accredited schools must, but we knew our kids were poor test-takers. They were with us to learn to read, and so much of a standardized test relies on just that. So, we took the scores with a grain of salt (sometimes alongside a margarita) and let it be.

Public schools test, test, and then test some more. They’ve got tests that measure growth (all kids need to gain one year’s worth of growth- whether they’re performing 2 years below grade level or 1 year above); kids need to show progress towards core-based goals (increased words per minute, higher reading levels, etc); they even need tests to show the fidelity of all the other tests. All this data is used to demonstrate that schools are doing their jobs to the best of their abilities. Best I can tell, public schools are running some kind of norm-referenced test about 10% of the time.

Truth: Teachers are losing their minds. If they aren’t losing their minds, they probably do a lot of yoga and meditation.

Truth: Parents are overwhelmed by all this testing information. What in the world does it all mean anyways? In my opinion, it means somewhere close to nothing.

What do we really want from our schools? I think we all want our kids to possess those foundational skills (reading, writing, and basic arithmetic- sans the hickory stick). But, once those things are in place, I think, the more I talk to parents, what they really want are kids who are driven and excited to learn. They don’t care so much about the test. They care that their child is engaged in learning, exposed to lots of modalities for learning, and finds the way that he learn best. That’s what determines success in college. A great memory is an asset, but it shouldn’t be the only predictor for success.

This is the ungettable get these days. How do we, amongst all this push to read x number of words per minute and pass a test that relies heavily on rote memorization, help motivate our kids, and keep our greatest teachers?

Truth: Great teachers, the ones who encourage creativity and get the best out of your child, are so stressed by this testing that they are leaving the profession.

Here are my two cents….

Train your teachers in multisensory teaching strategies.

Encourage your children to engage all their senses when learning – this implies that they are encouraged to move and explore.

Encourage creativity.

Worry less about test scores and rote memorization.

Focus more on motivating your child to love learning.

Help your child find his passion.

Cultivate that passion.

Trust your teachers to teach and encourage their creativity. When your teacher hands you test scores, take a peek, place them in your purse (consider using them for fire kindling), and begin a conversation about how Johnny is engaging in the classroom. Is he social? What’s his favorite academic subject? How do you, as his parent, help cultivate his enthusiasm for math or science or reading.

We don’t need assembly line workers anymore. We need innovators, researchers, teachers, and designers. We need more big-picture thinkers and problem solvers.

Encourage your children to play, run, roll around, to cook with you, read with you, to explore nature with you. These are the things that make great humans- not a score on a test. Everybody breathe into that.