Fighting the Data Vortex: How high stakes testing is sucking the life out of education

Let me just start this post out by saying that I am an Algebra 1 teacher in the state of Texas. For those of you who have no context for this predicament, this means I am in the one math course that is a state tested subject and that students are required to pass the state assessment in order to graduate. Campuses and districts are judged based on those scores yearly. If you are not in a similar situation, it is hard to explain the enormous pressure on students, teachers, campuses and districts to have high scores every year.

In my district we have historically done fairly well, especially given the lower socio-economic mix we have in our district and the disparities that usually implies. However, we are not immune to the intense push for higher and higher scores. This driving force has created what I like to term as the data vortex mostly because it is sucking the life out of true education and turning the art of teaching into a micromanaged system to collect more data so that we can make "data-driven decisions" so that our scores -the data- will improve and we will be viewed as a superior district by the state and by the general public. Never mind that this is the same public that claims they do not want teachers "teaching to the test" but if the school's test scores are not high enough for the ranking they, the parents,  desire, they will move their children and their money to a different district or campus.

So educators are in a bit of a catch 22 if you will. We are caught in the middle of a heavily flawed system of accountability for education and the only way to be successful as defined in the system is to sacrifice the real education of students and train them to succeed on one day, on one test, that will measure their worth as a student and determine their eligibility for graduation. A culmination of 13 years of hard work will boil down to one performance on one day; how many adults would crumble under that kind of pressure?

At the district level, many districts have met the fear of falling short with micromanagement of the classroom teacher all in the name of data. Teachers are given tests that mirror the state assessment that they are required to give students. Which at first may not sound too terrible. However, when the realization hits that the State creates the tests to be so difficult that a 43% correct is considered a passing rate, it is cause for pause. This means that the tests, which teachers are often required to count as test grades and are often dictated when they give them and how they can even grade them, are designed similarly where the average student will make around a 45-50%.  Now granted, there are some students who will do much better than that, and conversely there are others who will give up and stop trying because they can't seem to understand more than one or two questions. Usually a curve system or scale score is developed so that the students will not have very poor grades in the grade book, knowing that the expectation is that most students would not receive a score comparable to their coursework average and they will need a "cushion" for their scores.

These unit tests serve an important purpose from the district standpoint as they provide data to pour through, evaluate, compare, and utilize to create a plan of attack to improve because from the district standpoint, the end goal is to improve the scores. They also give students experience with the style of testing that they will face at the end of the year from the state. Teachers and administrators spend hours desegregating data and trying to formulate the perfect plan to have a higher rating at the end of the school year. The plan usually seems to work on the surface, but it is not without casualties.

The first casualty is often the autonomy of the classroom teacher. As stated before, teachers are given exact mandates in the way of someone else designing tests, the timeline of when they must test, how they must grade the test, what weight it has in their grade book, etc. It appears as though the teacher would still have some autonomy about how they instruct their students or present new materials or concepts, but if they want their students to do well (and if they do not want to be singled out in the data vortex as one who did not perform as well) they must teach in such a way that students will be able to be more and more successful on the tests, not necessarily successful in the learning of the concepts. The state provides a specific list of required skills that should be taught, and districts usually have a curriculum in place that helps teachers ensure they are addressing these skills appropriately, but this data vortex system takes it much farther than that. Many times teachers are pushed to sacrifice mastery in order to meet the requirements of the scope of content (something that goes against most teachers' core educational beliefs). Teachers tend to feel as though they are not trusted as professionals and that they have no control of true learning happening in their classroom.

A great teacher, in a good educational setting, does so much more than deliver content. Teachers challenge students to think, they give students a way to connect their learning to the world, they mentor, they advise, they even mother sometimes. Teachers love their students; they are their 'kids'. Lessons about self-efficacy in learning, responsibility for your own education, learning to cooperatively work together for an end goal, as well as lessons in character, work ethic and organization all take place in a great teacher's classroom, none of which will increase test scores. A great teacher gets to know their students and knows that 'John' only gets to eat if he comes to school and that 'Jenn' has a father on his deathbed and that 'Savannah and Stacy' are sisters that live in a motel room with 3 other siblings and two adults. A great teacher never equates these students with a test score or data because they are people, they are children; they are so much more than one test on one day. But that great teacher is held accountable if they do not make the data more important than the student and that teacher is rarely recognized as "great" because that kind of greatness will never show up on a standardized test. Time and again, the data vortex will suck the life and passion out of that teacher because that great teacher is tired of the fight.

The second casualty, by default of the first, is the student learning component. As aluded to before, students are reduced to numbers on a page, their learning to a score. Students are very aware of this fact and they are not fans of the data vortex at all. In general most students want to do well. However, when they are given tests that are designed for the majority of them to only achieve about a 50%, regardless of what adjusted grade is entered into the gradebook, students are very aware that they do not understand half of the material they are testing over (or more likely, the questions ar worded in such a way that they can not discern what material it is testing). Students, at least at the ninth grade level, will often give up if they know they are not going to understand a majority of what is placed in front of them. Now in the defense of the districts, this type of exerience does prepare the students for the state standardized testing situation since it is presented in much the same manner. In my opinion, this is the piece that helps students perform better on the state assessment. Giving students glimpses of the type of questioning they will be faced with is essential. Gathering data on how well they are doing on tested domains is even very useful. When the data becomes high risk every single time the students are faced with it because it counts for more than half of their classroom learning average, that is detrimental and students tend to shut down. It magnifies the pressure of the one test on one day scenario and pulls that same stress and emotion into a weekly or monthly event. In Texas, the extra component for high school students is that if the student does not pass the state mandated end-of-course test for five different subjects, they cannot graduate with their class, regardless of grades, attendance, perseverance, determination, and 13 years of public education. Students begin to perceive that their learning, their education, is less valuable than their scores. If we want students who enter adulthood with a sense of responsibility for their own learning we must give them the impression that self-efficacy is important and that learning and education is more than a testing event.

Here's the catch, as stated above, this is a flawed system. Accountability in education is important; we do not want a system where educators are given full-range to teach whatever, however, and whenever they wish with or without proper qualifications for teaching in that content area. Parents are deserving of a system that does give them some insight into the school campus or district that their student attends as their children are their greatest treasure and the future of our world. Districts are locked into this system and when their school or district does not meet certain standards, despite how flawed the system is, the general public,(the same public who screams that they do not want teachers to teach to the test) use the state rating on the state assessment to determine the viability of the school or district. If a parent or parent group only utilizes the data to determine the health or viabilty of a school, they are falling into the same data vortex trap that the districts are in. If those same parents or general public groups were making the decisions for the district about curriculum, likely they would make the same decisions regarding testing more to get more data and practice to do better on the scores so that public perception is that the school is improving- based solely on data and test scores.

 Maybe the change needs to begin with public and parent perceptions and definitions of what a good educational setting, what a great school, classroom or teacher looks like. Would a parent be happier to have a teacher who knows their child, teaches their child and finds ways to reach their child where they are, regardless of test scores? Or would that same parent rather the child practice and get experience to increase test scores? Or maybe it would be best to find a commonality of the two, if that is even possible. In my opinion, parents and the general public are our only hope for change. Teachers are limited in what they can say or do and continue to be an educator and administrations are locked into what is required of them until something changed. I am going out on a limb, just posting this blog post. I love my district and my campus and have amazing administrators and friends that I work with and for. There are many things that I do not agree with, but I still love the people. I also am logical enough to see the dilemma that districts are in, mostly through no fault of their own. Teacher groups have spoken to law makers for years, but let's face it, they are not the voice that needs to be heard. Parents select homes and spend the almighty dollar in places where the perception is there are great schools. Great schools are defined at the moment in public eye as one with high test scores year in and out. I do not have a solution, only a lot of thoughts, questions and maybe just something to make you think. If nothing else, I hope I inspire you to let that teacher that is working hard to reach your children, despite the pressures of high stakes testing and the data vortex that surrounds them, know that you see them; that you know they are a great educator and that you appreciate them. Sometimes just that simple gesture is enough to keep up the fight and hold tight to the passion.

~Mrs. R

Long-Reach Teach: What you can do to help a lot of kids without much money

Today I want to share something that I started on a whim about 8 or 9 years ago. I teach a lower income school district that tends to lag behind a bit in the technology area, just because the expense is enormous. Years ago, I looked into "flipping" my classroom, but decided that would not be beneficial to my students at the time as I still had many whose parents did not even have an email, much less computer access or wi-fi. As I brainstormed how I could help my students, I thought about creating a library of my recorded lessons. Our library had flip cameras that I could check out and my friend, the art teacher, had tiny tripods that I could borrow that she used when students did stop-motion projects. So I checked a camera out and began to experiment a little.

Flip Camera- super easy to use except some of the software is outdated

The side has a built-in flash drive that you extend, plug into your computer and download the video

My classroom set-up has a document camera and projector to the front screen (when I first started, the projector was on a cart the rolled around, but is now mounted on the ceiling) I would set up my little camera and point it at the board to show any notes and to record my voice as I taught. And guess what? It worked! It was a far cry from great cinematography and there were struggles with lighting and glare spots, but it worked! ( I prefer the Flip camera to my chromebook or ipad because it is easier to set up and keep stationary at this time. For the others, I would need an extra desk to set them on to record the board.)

And then came the real challenge- uploading it to an easy-to-reach site! I used my school website for a while, but ended up having to reformat the video types and often split them into pieces because they were too long. I tried YouTube, but it was slow and not easy to find the videos for the students. Then I discovered a learning/teaching platform called Schoology and created folders and organized them well. The newest platform that I currently use is Google Classroom, and I love it. I post a copy of the video, a copy of the notes pages and a copy of the corresponding assignment to the page and any student, adult, parent or administrator who has the classroom code can access them.

I cannot tell you how having these videos has changed my teaching strategies. It has helped me in so many ways and has helped my students in ways that I probably do not even know. The first thing I realized that was so beneficial was for students who were in a disciplinary in-school suspension situation or even at an alternative placement campus. These students can serve their discipline consequences and never fall behind! It has changed how I feel about sending to work to ISS. The instructor now just logs students into Google Classroom, gives them a set of headphones, and they sit, take notes, get the lesson and do not miss a single ounce of classroom instruction! That is huge!

It has helped students who have had to miss for a variety of reasons as they can utilize a computer or their phone and see the lesson even if they are in bed at home. One particular student, who had to go on homebound, I remember kept right up with the class the entire year utilizing my videos of the class lessons. Her other teachers at first thought I was just being nice about her grades because she was doing so well, but she was doing everything the students who were actually at school were doing and doing well, despite the fact that the homebound teacher was not strong in Algebra and struggled to assist her much.

I have had several parents who utilize the videos to keep up and help their students ( and not feel so clueless.) Let's face it, math is different than it used to be and most parents honestly can't begin to help their students. But if they have access to the exact same lesson their student had in class, they can feel more confident or even help explain more because they have more experience to relate to the lesson. Other students use the lessons to review or re-watch when they had a bad day or just zoned out during the class or can't remember one part of the lesson. I have also shared the lessons with friends of students in other Algebra teacher's classrooms at my school so they can have an explanation that might be worded differently and helped them have a light bulb moment. Believe it or not, I even have friends who teach in other districts who have shared the videos with their students, and friends who have children in other districts who have used them to help get through Algebra with their students. I personal believe it is an invaluable tool.

It is a tool, however, not without its downfalls. My tech department is working to figure out a more up-to-date and affordable alternative, but for now it is still what I am using. Flip cameras are out of date and tend to give me a little trouble sometimes when trying to load the videos. I also have learned to select a class that is not my first one (I get better as I teach it more), but it also needs to be a class that can handle the extra distraction and I have to be diligent about remember to set things up to record. I have procured a floor tripod that I set up now, so that is helpful. The video does not record any students other than questions they ask and I am careful to not say their names aloud as I teach when I am recording to protect them. I have had to resort to teaching to an empty classroom to record a lesson or two that my batteries were dead and the original didn't work or I had other technical difficulties. Other than that, It is fairly painless, just a little time consuming.

If you teach in a school that struggles with absenteeism, lower income, a lack of technology options or just have students that struggle, this is a great option to reach more students. It is fairly inexpensive, you do not have to actually be on camera (just my voice, not my face is there) and the payoff is much larger than the drawbacks. It really doesn't matter what subject you teach, it will help! It is even great if you have to miss, the sub can just show the video and your class is not behind! (you have to record those early though) I say give it a try! Don't be so scared and I guarantee your administrators will be impressed!

Here is a link to one of my videos, just to give you an idea of what they look like. They are not fancy, but they are effective.

http://bit.do/videolesson

I encourage to step out of your comfort zone just a little! If one teacher from every core subject area at a school would record lessons, think of how helpful that would be! I also feel like it is not an excuse to say your school does not have technology resources- you can brainstorm and figure something out that will reach your kids!

~Mrs. R