Testing, Testing, 1, 2, 3...

No, this isn't a "test post". It's a post about testing, or as we say in the education profession, "assessment." Most teachers I know (perhaps all) don't like assessment. At best, we tolerate it. At worst, we hate it.

I share an office with a teacher who's been teaching for 30 years. She has exclaimed on more than one occasion that she'd like teaching even more if we didn't have to test anyone. Kids have, from time to time, made some sort of comment about how teachers are "out to get them" on tests. I laugh. "Yeah -- because it's so much easier for me to fail you, right?" I say. "Then I get to deal with parent conferences, retests, curves, blah, blah blah..." No, believe me, it would be much easier for most teachers to give easy grades and just get past that whole issue.

Of course, then they might be leaving a mess for the next teacher in line...

Assessment is, of course, part of the job. In public schools, it defines the job. You are measured by the way your students do on the PACT test, for example. I'm so grateful that we, as an independent (private) school, are not held to these standards, but are actually allowed to set our own (hopefully higher). Our headmaster has been quoted in a faculty meeting, in fact, as saying that the way our kids do in the world after high school is our PACT test.

Sometimes I'm approached by a parent who complains that assessment can be terribly arbitrary. While I might not come right out and agree with them, the fact is that their instincts are on the mark. I'm only in my fourth year of teaching now, and it's clear even to me that I can make a test that the whole class will fail, and I can make a test that the whole class will pass. Add a little bit of "curving" (actually "shifting") to that, and, in fact, I can come up with just about any grade distribution I want. What I aim for is one in which the median grade is about a 78, and the spread isn't too outrageous. I try to make it really hard to actually fail my class, and pretty darned hard to maintain a consistent A. . It's relative. I cannot say that I have some absolute scale against which I measure a student's skill or comprehension, beyond the very basic. Often, in fact, I wonder if I couldn't just give my students a grade about two weeks into the year and then get on to teaching without the extra burden of actually testing them. I'd probably be very close most of the time...

Anyway....

I'll leave you with this. I had my students complete a writing assignment recently where they were asked to "explain what math is." One student didn't finish the assignment, and simply wrote "Math is". I complemented him on his insight.