Commentary —

Schools – What Were Those Goals Again?

Though good scores,

Bring satisfaction;

Tests are still,

A big distraction.

Like any columnist, I keep a file on education. Also like any columnist, mine is jammed with clippings about Mastery Tests. Other aspects of schools pop up now and then, but tests scores drown them out. Have we gone too far?

I remember clear back when statewide standardized tests were proposed. They would show us how each student was progressing, and suggest individual interventions to help keep him or her on track. Right? Now there is severe question whether we should track individual students at all, fearing loss of privacy.

Instead the test has taken on a life of its own. Towns eye one another suspiciously. Did Town A find excuses to exempt its poor performers from the exam, in order to improve its average score? Did Town B strongarm kids to come back on Saturday to practice? Did Town C shortchange other parts of its curriculum to focus on reading, writing, and arithmetic? And worst, did Town D give kids some of the answers?  There’s a lot at stake in these scores, especially property values.

There are other risks too. Claiming to make a complex subject like education quantifiable is to open Pandora’s Box. The winds of discord have now been loosed, and henceforth the media will care only about comparing this year’s scores with last year’s, and one town’s with another’s. Additional education goals are no longer of consequence.

Take funding. The press used to watch whether the state was hewing to its goal of paying 50 percent of local education costs. Now it pays far less, but reporters no longer notice. They are too enraptured with scores. Mayors and school superintendents shout about this unfairness until blue in the face, but no one listens.

Teachers, too, have valid, unheard complaints. How are they supposed to teach their regular subjects if so much time is consumed by preparing for the test? How do they avoid test burnout as this scrutiny goes on year after year? Why should they stay in combative inner-city schools when life is easier, scores higher, and the pay better in the ‘burbs? There is even talk in some districts of basing teacher compensation on how well their pupils do on the test.

Ironically, even scoring well can be a hazard. Hartford, long at the bottom of every heap, won an extra $5 million from the legislature last year to help it up off the Mastery Test floor. Well, it worked. With superhuman effort, and perhaps a little guile, Hartford beat out New Haven and Windham. Its reward? That’s right – loss of the $5 million.

Any money, of course, is the issue. Kids aren’t poor learners due to a lack of testing. It’s due to a lack of pre-natal care, decent diet, housing, child care, trained parents, stimulation, health care, attention, and all the other afflictions of poverty. By the time the first test is taken, the game is already over.

Thus testing has become camouflage for an unwillingness to grapple with the fundamental causes of poor learning. We dabble in magnet schools, charter schools, and revolutionary curriculum, but the crux of the matter is that too many kids come to school unready to learn. That drags down everyone else, causing those parents who can, to move.

So maybe we need a five-year moratorium on testing, and a crusade instead to combat poverty. It would be slow going, but at least we would no longer be kidding ourselves.

(Bill Collins, a former Mayor of Norwalk, is a syndicated Columnist.)