In 1990, Indiana schools began administering an exam to all students to assess their mathematics and language arts skills. The test came and went every year without much fuss for the first five years. Then, in 1995, state legislators redesigned it to include a criterion- referenced component that included multiple-choice questions, an applied skills assessment with short-answer and essay questions, and open-ended math problems. Moreover, the new legislation required that 10th graders pass this component to graduate. School administrators and teachers took notice: The state was getting serious about testing.
That spring, our principal told us to familiarize ourselves with the new state proficiencies and then to spend the last six weeks of school providing the 9th grade students with an Indiana State Test of Educational Proficiencies-Plus review. English and mathematics teachers from across the school district were given professional leave days to develop new worksheets for students to use in preparing for the exam. Math teachers poured over textbooks for open-ended questions on the pytha-gorean theorem, surface area, solving inequalities, and simple probability. Teachers of English created writing prompts and looked for opportunities for students to sort fact from opinion and science fiction from myth or to come up with the main idea in a paragraph.
When school began in the fall, we had six weeks to prepare our sophomores for the test. Teachers were encouraged to abandon the regular curriculum and instead devote time to test practice. Four days before the test, all sophomores were called out of their English classes and given more worksheets to complete, along with lectures on the dire importance of the test and of getting a good night's sleep and eating a good breakfast beforehand. For five mornings, teachers left their classes to proctor the exam, while other teachers watched the proctors' regular classes. And then it was over. Teachers were relieved to get back to the regular curriculum.
Several months later, we learned that 38 percent of our sophomores had failed both the math and English portions of the test. Those who had failed only one portion of the test were offered after-school remediation sessions, and their teachers were given forms to document the students' in-class review of basic skills. Students who had failed both portions of the test had the added requirement of a semester-long remediation course, offered in the junior and senior years. Waivers would be granted to seniors who had not passed the test if they had a 95 percent attendance rate for all four years of high school, tried to take the test four out of the five times it was offered, maintained a 2.0 in the courses required for graduation, and had the approval of their school principal and teachers.
In the spring, the cycle began again but in ever-widening circles. As we had the year before, we spent the last six weeks reviewing the proficiences with our freshmen. Those of us who taught sophomores who had "failed to qualify" also had to set aside time for individual remediation sessions. As required by law, we designed new summer and regular semester courses for sophomores who had failed both math and English.
The following year began with the usual preparation of sophomores. But now many 11th grade teachers had students who hadn't qualified and had to put away the regular curriculum to prepare those students for the test. Posters announcing after-school preparation sessions peppered the hallways. Despite the large number of sophomores and juniors who had to take the test, attendance was surprisingly low at these sessions, averaging about 15 students in math and 10 students in English each session. The low attendance stumped many teachers. What were our students thinking?
We knew that the test had changed our lives: It had caused the entire school to grind to a halt for two weeks and inspired panic-driven cram sessions instead of assessment-aligned curri-culum changes. But what had it done to the lives of our students? The focus really belonged on the students who had to take this test—and retake it until they passed.
Listening to Students
We started gathering information in the fall of 1999 with the sophomores who were then preparing to take the test. Although their intense review had only recently begun, these students were well aware of the test and its implications.
We asked all the sophomores in our school to rank their anxiety level on a scale of one to ten. Although the average fell right in the middle, the responses were spread across the range. Almost half the students, however, worried that the test might keep them from graduating. It struck us as odd that students who considered themselves at risk for not graduating said that they were only minimally anxious about the test. In addition, 89 percent of all students said that their parents were not worried that they might fail. Although these numbers could have been a misrepresentation by the students, under no circumstances should they have been so high; the previous test results indicated that a great many of these confident students would fail.
Why were so many of the students seemingly undaunted by the test? Follow-up interviews and discussions led us to several possible answers. Some students simply did not feel threatened by the thought of not receiving a high school diploma. They cited friends who had dropped out of school and were either gainfully employed or enrolled in postsecondary education. As one student said, "If I fail, I fail. I'll just get my GED." Students who performed well in school knew that they would be able to graduate on waiver. Although they admitted that the thought of not passing was "humiliating," they were well aware of their options and did not believe that their lives would come to a halt if they did not pass the test.
Most of the students had not yet con-sidered contingency plans but dismissed the test as unfair. An unfair test is not worth worrying about, and interviews indicated that students did not value the results. Some students thought it unfair that their work in school might boil down to a single test. "It isn't fair that some students aren't good test takers, and they'll end up not graduating just because of one test," one student said. Most of these students claimed to do very well in school and balked at the notion that a week of testing might obviate all their other efforts. Others felt that the test was unfair because the results did not reflect what they thought to be true about themselves or their schoolmates. Students were able to cite name after name of those who had failed but had done well in school or of those who had passed but had done poorly in school.
The students also were suspicious of the scoring process. They believed that the tests would be scored by people unqualified to judge the value of their work. The students also did not put faith in the appeals process for getting tests rescored. They had heard about many students who had answered a question correctly but had not received a response when their test was sent in on appeal.
Valerie was one such student who discounted the test results. She had faced the test repeatedly and had failed every time in both math and English. She went to the after-school remediation sessions. She completed the barrage of worksheets. She enrolled in the remediation classes in both her junior and senior years. She did "everything they told me." Her perseverance appeared to stem not so much from a perceived need to fill the gaps in her learning as it did from her belief that jumping through the hoops would get her a diploma. As she said, "I'm not worrying about [the test] anymore. I have what I need, and I'll just keep taking it until I get my waiver." Did the test results show Valerie what she was capable of? She was not shaken from her plans of attending a private college after high school. Her planned career? "I want to be a teacher."
Nor did the students condemn their peers for poor test performance. The vast majority of students surveyed strongly disagreed that students who performed poorly on the test should not graduate. An oft-repeated refrain was that the test "doesn't prove anything."
Separating the test from reality is an easy task considering that the normal school world stops when it is time for testing. Students notice this change. It affects their lives. One student com-mented that the test review took away time that his teachers had to "cover everything else." As long as students can identify this separation of test and curriculum, the value that they give to the test will be minimal.
One of the culprits in establishing this separation of test and curriculum may be the review itself. When the review is set apart from the rest of the curriculum, it can have the opposite of its intended effect. Intense repetition of the basics was reported as a chief frustration by many students, both for those who have mastered the basics and for those who have not.
Although most students were not worried about the test, some of the students did say that they were apprehensive because of "all the hype." They said that teachers made them nervous with constant warnings about the importance of the test and admonishments to pay attention to certain material that might be on the test. When teachers and administrators repeat their warnings about the importance of the test, the only thing sure to change is the anxiety level of the students. According to our survey, the majority of students reported that their teachers cared more about the test than the students did.
Listening to these student voices has made us rethink our approach to the test preparation. This spring, when prompted to drag out our worksheets and begin warning freshmen about the importance of the test, we'll use the insights from our students. They reminded us that preparation means more learning, not more warnings. We all want our students to perform to the best of their ability, but forcing students to shoulder the burden of our own fears about their possible poor performance is fruitless. Emphasizing test preparation over and above learning will bore, frustrate, and frighten our learners. Let the politicians worry about media-reported scores. We plan to return to teaching.
