Boycott the Test

By ROBERT PONDISCIO
January 4, 2008

As millions of New York City parents have noticed, test prep mania in city schools is at fever pitch. The New York State English Language Arts tests for grades three through eight are just days away. It is the rare student's backpack that does not come home this time of year with a school-issued test prep book in it.

The idea that high-stakes tests now dominate a child's education is so common and obvious that it's hardly worth discussing. If parents are truly alarmed about the vast number of instructional hours lost to mindless test prep — and they should be — they have a simple, effective weapon at their disposal: Boycott the test.

If even a fraction of the parents who say they are disturbed by their school's obsession with testing kept their children home on the day of the test next week the impact could be stunning. The fever won't break until after the statewide math tests in March.

As even the most casual observer now understands, the City's Department of Education runs on test scores. Taking that data away by boycotting the test would make it nearly impossible for it to function. How could we grade schools? How could we distribute merit pay without test results?

Maybe we're seeing a little narrowing in curriculum due to the test prep arms race that has been unleashed in our schools, but surely that's a small price to pay for the extraordinary levels of scrutiny and accountability we enjoy. Indeed, let's please stop the whining about the impact of testing on education.

The report cards issued by the New York City Department of Education last month based 85% of each school's A to F grade on standardized test results. Any principal or teacher who is not focused on trying to improve their test scores by any means, fair or foul, is probably not smart enough to be entrusted with the care of children.

If "good schools" stop doing what's worked for them and beef up on test prep to boost or maintain their report card scores that shows they're responsive to the pressure of accountability. We should be pleased.

On the other hand, it's unbelievable that a lousy, even violent school can earn an A or B simply due to making some progress. There must be a difference between that and the soft bigotry of low expectations, but if so, I haven't quite figured it out yet.

Ironically, low-income children were supposed to be the ones who stood to benefit the most from testing, since accountability shines an uncomfortably bright light onto failing schools. So why do they seem to be suffering the most? The focus on testing has robbed hundreds of thousands of such children of a rich, academic curriculum that might actually help close the achievement gap. A good curriculum has disappeared so that more time can be focused on test prep, which only benefits the adults by making the results look as good as possible.

Social studies, science, art, and music — already starved for oxygen in many city schools — have a tendency to disappear altogether from the school day as winter sets in, to make way for endless practice exams and lessons on "test sophistication."

The children of relatively well-off parents have opportunities for enrichment outside of school that can mitigate the effects of testing mania. For the children of the poor, a broad education sacrificed to test prep represents an opportunity that once gone, is probably lost forever.

By refusing to allow their children to be tested, parents of all income levels could send a powerful message: accountability matters, but it's not a license to deny my child a content-rich, well-rounded education.

Certainly it could be argued that if parents voted with their feet — or their kids' feet on testing days — it just might restore sanity to education and get schools back to the business of teaching and learning.

Ultimately a school system, like any government agency, should not be viewed as "them" but as "us." If our children were spending more time on civics, instead of underlining key passages on practice tests, they might be able to remind us that in a representative democracy, government tends to act in accordance with the generally expressed will of the people.

If parents made it clear to those who make education decisions on their behalf that swapping learning for test prep is not what they had in mind when they asked for accountability, it's reasonable to assume that attention would be paid. A testing boycott would undoubtedly be dismissed as reckless and counterproductive. Perhaps so. But it would be effective. Incredibly effective.

A former public school teacher, Mr. Pondiscio is writing a book on public and private schools in New York City.

Boycott the Test

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