Instead of complaining about your school’s test scores, figure out how you can help.
Our schools’ test scores are in. Today, you can look up your school’s results and note the number.
Then forget about it.
Test scores are extremely limited in what they tell us, the general public, about our schools. This year, they tell us even less, except that our kids learned at home for most of last year, and some of the year before, while many of their parents struggled with housing, employment and food insecurity. In addition, we have really no idea which schools improved or decreased because students weren’t tested in 2019-2020. Plus, this KSA testing system, as it’s now called, is new and we have nothing with which to compare it.
“Disappointing,” state officials said of the results. “Expected” would have been more accurate. Even more expected was the same old trope: Schools with high percentages of wealthy kids did well, while schools with concentrations of socio-economic need, made worse by a pandemic, struggled. Surprise, surprise. In a year filled with the most trauma and fear that most of us have ever known, math scores did not shoot through the roof!
Test scores are a very crude way to measure success, but they are used broadly to punish or reward schools and teachers. Then they are used by the parents and real estate agents to decide which schools are “good” and which are “bad,” which goes a long way toward creating economic and racial segregation.
I don’t know why the federal government required that kids be tested this year, but they did. Like the well-intentioned but controversial No Child Left Behind law, test scores are one measure of accountability. They are useful in measuring achievement gaps between racial and economic groups, but they should not be used to determine the total worth of a school and its teachers. Many teachers think the tests have narrowed curriculum and stifled creative teaching methods because the overwhelming pressure for better scores leads teachers to “teach to the test.”
The only “winners” in high-stakes testing are giant testing companies like Pearson, which have made windfall after windfall on states like Kentucky every time we decide we need a new test. Which is often. KIRIS, CATS, K-PREP are just a few of the different systems that have shaped our curriculum. Now it’s the Kentucky Summative Assessment, big words that say not much.
We also don’t want this event to be used as yet another pile-on for public schools and teachers, who are facing, you know, the daily struggles to keep themselves and their students healthy, along with constant battles for pay, funding and support, even with the knowledge that Frankfort’s ruling party would like to just privatize the whole enterprise. As parents, we complain endlessly about transportation and homework and having to wear masks.
Here are some alternatives. Instead of complaining about your school, thank your kid’s teacher for being on the frontlines every day so that our children did not have to revisit our online hell from last year. Instead of bemoaning test scores, look at your kid’s school, and figure out what you could do to help. If its reading scores aren’t great, why not call the school and ask about reading one on one with a child? Join the PTA and help it raise funds for enrichment programs. Most of all, tell the teachers you’ve got their back and show them so by wearing a mask and getting vaccinated. Our public school problems are bigger than COVID, but it has definitely made them worse. Don’t add on by complaining about garbage test scores, just move on, and let’s do whatever we can to help.
This story was originally published September 29, 2021 at 11:57 AM.
