Only a Test

“It’s okay, Mom, it’s only a test,” my 9 year old says almost convincingly as he brushes off my attempts to give him a pep talk. His eyes won’t meet mine, and I know his bravado is thin.

For the past week, both my older boys have had the chance to indulge in that new American childhood pastime, state-mandated standardized testing. My fifth grader is finishing up six days of tests in reading, math, and science. He is took his math exams on a computer for the first time. My third grader was treated to a relatively short four days of reading and math testing. Failing his tests would mean mandatory retention: repeating third grade, regardless of his class grades.

My particular kids are not in danger of failing these exams. However, their school years have centered around them. I would not say that their entire curriculum nor all their coursework has been “teaching to the test,” because I don’t think that is true. We’re lucky enough to have dedicated teachers that do teach more than just to the test. But I do think that the tests hang in the air in their classrooms, never quite out of sight or mind for the teacher or the students.

In third grade, I was still learning to write effective paragraphs and to perfect my cartwheel at the exact same elementary school where my children attend now. In my gifted resource class, I was dissecting a starfish and presenting a report on the Bermuda Triangle, complete with transparencies (Remember transparencies?). My teacher read us Where the Red Fern Grows aloud from a stool in the front of the classroom. I came home each day, ate snacks, watched Scooby-Doo, and played outside until dinnertime.

I took standardized tests, but they were “fun” because they were on just one day out of many, and they didn’t mean anything to me. My children and their friends, by comparison, understand well the stakes involved in their tests. They know failing means retention in third grade. They know that the scores determine which math classes they are allowed to take and whether or not they will have to take intensive remedial classes in reading or math in upcoming years. They talk about the tests in their free time at the cafeteria tables and on the playground. When they make “All About Me” pages or write poems for class, they include lines about how they hope to pass the state tests. Have you ever heard the acronym “FCAT” in a third grader’s haiku? It’s pretty sad.

I’m an academics-oriented parent. My husband and I take school seriously. However, my only goals for my children’s elementary school experience have been that they learn the foundational skills they need for their educations and that, most importantly, they learn to love school. I would hope that every child could love elementary school, and I can’t imagine instilling motivation and drive for higher education in my kids if they didn’t love their time in the primary grades. School should still be very lovable when you are 8 years old.

Unfortunately, the environment our children are in now, with these standardized tests and their expectations and high-stakes results, does not nurture a love for school. I have observed 8 year olds dealing with test anxiety. I have watched their parents panic even more, all the while trying to act nonchalant in front of their kids. I have seen teachers try valiantly to walk the line between not freaking their students out and yet not freaking out themselves because their pay, or even their jobs, could be tied to their students’ results.

This is madness. And to what end?

My kids are in the gifted resource programs too. They don’t dissect starfish or learn about the Bermuda Triangle. They do have the chance to explore some outside-the-test-box subjects, but the state now dictates that they mostly receive just extra academic work — more math, more reading. At least in that setting they are given a chance to play with math manipulatives and games — the kind every student should have. They have more science than their peers, too. Because science isn’t tested until fifth grade, science curriculum in elementary school until fifth grade is very minimal. Good thing science isn’t an important subject or anything.

Recess is twice a week, depending on the teacher. Twice a week. For elementary school students. Some teachers (not mine, thank goodness) still use recess as a punishment, taking it away from the very kids who need the chance to touch a playground the most.

I can work around school budget cuts and the minimizing of everything but the curriculum the kids must cover before the annual tests. I give my kids time to play outside after school, to swim in the pool and climb on their playset every day. We supplement the lack of recess and the weak P.E. curriculum with athletic extracurricular activities like tennis or flag football. We give them math and logic games here at home, we make sure they have access to any book they ever want to read, and we let them perform basic science experiments in the kitchen. I can give my children these things because my husband makes enough money to pay for them and because I stay at home and play taxi to my children in the afternoons — neither of which is a luxury other parents, even in our middle class neighborhood, can sometimes afford.

But I cannot opt out of standardized tests. I can’t shield my kids from these ridiculous exercises. If the tests were truly just tests, I wouldn’t need to shield them. If they weren’t the talk of the school water coolers, if they didn’t color their entire third, fourth, and fifth grade school years, if they didn’t mean that everything stops during those testing weeks except testing, then they could be considered “only tests.” But they are not. They are instead often the basis for these children’s self worth, the measure of their entire school year’s success.

I have a 10 year old worried there will be a computer glitch that will harm his score, who can opine on how much easier it is to do math problems on paper without transferring the answers to computer screens (something I did not do until I took the GRE in my 20s). But he is a lucky one — he has enough natural writing talent that he was able to deftly handle last year’s FCAT writing prompt that asked him to write about a time when he rode a camel — something he has never done — while also using the desired varied syntax, interesting vocabulary, main ideas with concrete elaboration, and an appropriate introduction and conclusion as well as correct spelling and punctuation. How many Florida public school children have ridden a camel? Is it fair to evaluate all of Florida’s fourth graders in any given year based on their ability — at 9 and 10 years old — to creatively write about an experience they probably haven’t had in a high-pressure testing situation? If this was a classroom assignment, a learning experience, I would applaud it. But the children and their parents don’t even have the chance to see the graded writing samples.

How much time is wasted testing these children that could be spent teaching these children? How much money, time, and resources are spent on this ritual? My school principal was forced to use all his allocated school improvement money on building a new second computer lab this year — solely for the purpose of administering the standardized tests on computers. Our school doesn’t have a science lab at all. We have a cadre of teachers who work hard and actually care, and we ask them to spend a large chunk of their school year focusing not on innovative teaching methods, but on making sure their students can pass this one test.

Again, for my children, this is only a test. They’re not going to fail. I don’t worry about them failing. I worry about what effect it will have on them that school is already a business, that they are receiving the message at 8, 9, and 10 years old that the only thing that matters about their days there is what they ultimately score on these exams. Why should they care about their daily coursework? What about their days will inspire them to explore more and want more from their educations in their high school and college years? Why can’t we get this right? If everyone — administrators, teachers, parents, and students — are miserable about standardized testing, why don’t we end it? Why are we continuing to subject everyone to this inane process?

What’s wrong with kids these days? Everyone asks. I wonder. These aren’t only tests. These are tests that are changing how our children view school — and themselves.