‘Waste of Time:’ Teachers question wisdom of state testing during a pandemic
As students in New Orleans are getting ready to take yearly state testing, teachers paint a picture of a chaotic year capped with confusion over why testing is going on. Many Orleans Parish schools re-opened in the Fall 2020 semester, only to close due to an uptick in cases. This semester, as case numbers are going down, many schools are embracing a hybrid education. A return to the classroom brings along a return to standardized testing – which has some educators puzzled.
Testing aside, teachers are juggling more than just education. Tessa Rose is a 5th grade teacher on the West bank. She describes her duties outside of teaching as “wiping everything down all the time, constantly cleaning everything.” Also, enforcing a mask mandate that feels absurd at times – “I’m telling them 30 times a day to pull their mask up because as they take it down and drink some water, and they don’t pull it back up where they claim they can’t breathe, and they pull it down and pull it back up. Or they just feel like taking it off and don’t want to wear it kind of thing… It feels kind of silly and pointless because we’re eating breakfast and lunch in the classroom anyway.”
Another issue she mentions is a disparity in quality of education between online students and in-person students. 2/3rds of her students are in person, but she’s still worried about the third that are online: “I have students doing virtual school who haven’t turned in a single assignment since December. They show up every day online. They don’t do a single piece of work, they don’t turn in a single assignment, they don’t ask a single question, they have no idea what’s going on.”
Brandon Lamartiniere teaches 10th graders World History at Booker T. Washington High School. “I’ve got, on any given day, 5 to 13 in front of me in the classroom. I have another 15 who are zooming in. The biggest difficulty is how do I give the virtual kids the same care and quality of education that they absolutely deserve while still being present for my kids who are in front of me?”
He shares a similar sentiment to Tessa – “as educators, we recognize there are definite gaps. I don’t think that necessarily mitigates the work that teachers have done this year. We have all tried incredibly hard. One of the things that many teachers would probably tell you is we’ve worked harder this year to close some of those gaps, then we’ve ever had to before. But with the way that the scheduling has been like, I’ve seen my kids less this year than any year previously.”
Juggling enforcement of mask mandates and the fact that students are finally seeing the inside of a classroom for the first time in nearly a year has local teachers questioning the state’s decision to give testing – Lamartiniere says “I’ve had to make strategic cuts from curriculum because we just don’t have the sheer amount of time, right? To give an assessment that is expecting kids to have covered the full breadth of the curriculum is absurd… To continue business as usual when things have not been usual is, in my mind, notoriously tone-deaf.”
On March 17th, 2020, Governor John Bel Edwards granted waivers for schools to forgo LEAP testing because of the pandemic. In a statement released by the LA Department of Education, Dr. Cade Brumley, State Superintendent of Education, writes “we cannot afford to go another year without understanding where students are academically … The data from the LEAP 2025 assessments will not only help us examine the ‘COVID effect’ on student learning, it will help us better understand how me might allocate resources to ensure we are serving all students.”
It is unclear how the state will use this year’s test results. Traditionally, LEAP scores are used to give schools a letter grade which translates into funding for the school. It is also used to gauge elementary and middle school student’s readiness for the next grade – in rare cases, poor performance on the test can lead to being held back. The BESE has the option of filing a petition to waive letter grades given to schools this year but will not decide until June 15th.
Rose says she and her fellow teachers have the same perspective when it comes to testing – “we all feel like, why are they taking this test? Why are we wasting our time on this test? Our principal has to put on a face and say, ‘testing is important, we have this opportunity to see where we’re at. Students are going to have to test for the rest of their lives and it’s good for them to practice testing.’ But nobody, nobody wants the students take the Test. It’s a waste time for the students. The parents feel like it’s wasted as well.”
She believes the time and resources put towards state testing could be more wisely used to catch students up – “It’s an entire week of just testing, which, again, with all the learning loss that has occurred and time that we’ve lost, it’s just so crazy to focus so much time on testing, rather than teaching. We know they’re behind, we’re going to test them and we’re going to realize they’re behind. And that’s not going to help anyone because we already know that.”
Brandon estimates the time lost educating due to testing is more than the week-long test: “if you think about it from the perspective of how much time are we losing because we’re in review mode? Well, then that’s a very, very different conversation.” Lamartinierre is referring to “teaching to the test,” the practice of using the weeks before the test to prepare students for standardized testing.
He also questions the judgment of forcing students to take the test in-person – Louisiana is not allowing online testing due to security concerns: “you’re telling those kids you will test in-person in a building that you haven’t been to in over a year, or maybe, ever right? Maybe our new students to our school? That’s something.”
“The fact that there’s been such huge disparities in students that have been in-person and students that have been online and tech problems – that’s not going to be taken into account when they have to take this test,” Rose says.
State testing is an issue larger than COVID-19. It has been a source of controversy nationwide since the No Child Left Behind Act was passed in 2001. With the education reform bill’s passing, mandated standardized testing became a way to hold schools accountable for poor student scores. But, some argue that the test benefits upper-middle class students and teachers say they can’t do anything with the results themselves.
“The idea behind testing is that, in theory, it is an objective measure of student progress. As soon as the word objective is used, that should probably be a flag. Because what is objectivity? And, how can we make that authentic for, so many students coming across different strata?”
Lamartiniere is not alone in this thinking. Giving a one-size fits all standardized test to millions of students who vary greatly in life experience has many experts worried. Studies have correlated socioeconomic status with higher test scores, leading teachers to raise questions of is the test really an objective, impartial assessment if wealthier students consistently score better?
Another argument against testing is that teachers aren’t given enough information from the students test to help them.
Rose says, “they don’t give us the results – they tell us which students scored satisfactory, approaching basic, basic, mastery, and advanced. But they don’t tell us ‘hey these are the things your students are struggling with’ which makes the testing even more absurd. Because why assess our students and find out where they’re lacking if you’re not going to tell us where they’re lacking?”
Expect more information on what the state plans to do with test scores by June 2021. The Louisiana Board of Elementary and Secondary Education (BESE) will be meeting to discuss this among other topics.
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