It's my dentist's fault I have cavities, the doctor's fault I have cancer, the teachers' fault our kids are failing

I’ve spent the last couple of weeks thinking about high stakes testing. I’ve had plenty of better things to mull over – my marathon training, my fundraising, my fat intake – which is up, my protein intake – which is not.  Those are things I have some control over. Those are things worth spending time on. 

I have no control over the high stakes testing that rules my professional life. Why obsess over our MCAS? Why worry?  And yet I can’t help but wonder because it’s been building inside me.  I can’t help but ask. Is the MCAS my fault? And by my fault I don’t mean just me. I mean, is the huge monster that the MCAS has become the fault of the teachers of Massachusetts. 

Should we have said what we thought, way back in 1999, when the testing was in its infancy? Could we have nipped it in the bud? Could we have said to the Ed Reform folks, find another way?  

When we saw how few fourth graders scored advanced on that first one – about five percent or so in my city that first year -- should we have gathered together and shouted, “Enough with this nonsense. Let’s do away with this broken thing. Let’s get back to teaching! ”

Maybe, once that first test was fixed and given again in 2000 then fixed then given again in 2001 and so on, we should have said what we all thought: This is a waste of time.  This is a boondoggle. This is a giant shell game. This is a hole into which we are throwing money. This is a way of blaming me, the teacher, for everything.  This is garbage.  

Maybe we should have talked about what we saw. What we felt. What we knew to be true.  What we know to be true still today. I’ve been teaching 21 years. I’ve taught in the inner city all but that first year.  Here are the truths I know.  

1.  The only thing we can say the MCAS truly reveals is how much stamina a student has – as in holding a pen, as in sitting still, as in working with a full bladder.  

  

Fact: Your typical 11-year-old is highly unlikely to do their best work when that work takes place over a solid hushed six hours with the exception of a silent 20-minute lunch. 

How many grownups do you know who would test well under those circumstances?  I honestly don’t know because I don’t know of any test that requires an adult to sit still for that long. 

I don’t know of any test that requires an adult to raise a hand to use the toilet and to wait and continue testing, full bladder and all, for maybe an hour or more for the basic human right to use a toilet. Why the wait? Because so many others in the room raised their hands before you did and the rules say you need to have a trained MCAS escort bring you quietly to the bathroom in case you use that time to cheat. So you must continue to work while you wait and wait and wait for the one trained person on the floor who has the job of bringing each of the ninety of you to the bathroom three floors down. 

 I would have flunked the SATs if I had to take that test on a full bladder. I know that much.  

2. The maturity factor.  MCAS reveals as much about the maturity level of the student as it reveals about that student’s reading level. I have met maybe two nine-year-olds who truly understood that filling in all those silly bubbles really mattered.  

3. You want to use the test to judge my teaching ability?  That test reveals maybe a little about my teaching ability. It is not the end all and be all of who I am or what I do. 

There were some years where up to a quarter of the students in my class had parole officers who had multiple opportunities to place the kids in facilities with more restrictive learning environments due to the huge disruptions to learning that these kids would instigate. Yet these officers would give the kids second and third and fourth chances.  Those kids didn’t know how to read well, but had straight As in manipulation of court personnel. Do you think my class as a whole learned a lot those years? I have no idea. It's all a blur at this point.

On the plus side, those were the years I got back into running. My doctor said it was either that, find another profession, or go on high blood pressure meds.    

On the reverse end of things, I’ve gotten many compliments on my high test scores over the years.  My responses vary. Here are some: 

I had very few students with behavior issues that year.

I couldn’t have done such a good job were it not for the hard work of my colleagues who taught them so well in kindergarten, first grade, second, or it was that music teacher who took that child under her wing from day one, or the art teacher, and so on. I'm still waiting, by the way, for those high school Advanced Placement teachers to throw me and my elementary colleagues a complimentary bone some day. . .  we deserve more than what we get from them, which is ignored.

Here’s my favorite response:  Most of the kids have lots of books at home. Their parents were reading with them from the day they were born. 

Here’s one I don’t get to use that often any more: None of my students this year were homeless or hungry or involved with DCF, or moved constantly. 

4. Parents.  The MCAS reveals a ton about a huge factor: parental priorities. Ask any teacher anywhere and  he/ she will be able to reel off names of kids who – just when their teachers were really getting them primed for some solid bubbling-in  action -- got pulled out of school sometimes for weeks right before the MCAS for family reunions in Vietnam or El Salvador or Disney World.   

You try getting a kid to focus on a state test when they’ve just spent the night before on the red­-eye from San Francisco.  Or at an impromptu family get-together a few towns over that went until midnight. Watch those heavy lids flutter, close, and open again only to flutter, close, etc. Cry inside when they finish first. Imagine your class MCAS average dropping, that year of hard work flushing right down the tubes. 

5. The language/ immigrant/ poverty redux factor. The state admits it takes a full seven years for most kids to learn English thoroughly enough to read, write and speak on grade level. So how fair is it that kids in this country less than two years are expected to show huge gains in reading and writing right from the get-go?  How fair is it to those kids? How fair is it to their teachers?  

Throw in the fact that learning a new language is oftentimes the least of the problems these kids are living with. Those of us who teach in the inner city know at least two, five, seven, a dozen kids who are homeless RIGHT NOW. Would you test well if you didn’t know where you’d be spending the night? Or if the family in the shelter with you, the one in the next thin-walled room over, had a sick kid who cried all night, which prevented you from sleeping and kept your little brother up, and maybe your parent too, and then everyone was fighting because they were crabby and stressed out? 

We have kids who never see their parents. I’m not talking neglect here. I’m not talking about the highly- paid parent who’s always away on business trips. I hear that’s a huge issue too, but not one I’m familiar with. I’m talking the reality of being new to a country and having no money and working three jobs just to put generic cereal on the table and cheap coats on backs. I’m talking parents who can’t write in their own languages, never mind in English; parents who don’t understand about high stakes tests because they themselves never went to school or because they’re too busy focusing on day-to-day survival to care. I’m talking about the parent who can’t check the kids’ homework or can’t read the school test notices because they truly can’t read them and so can’t reinforce at all what teachers mean when they tell the kids how important these tests are, and that they need to get to bed early.  

There is so much more I could go on and on about. But I need a break. I need a nap. I went to school sick again today because I work in an old building filled with dust and moldy smells and I was surrounded by sick kids, many of whom took the MCAS while they were at tops 80 percent. Sick while testing. Another factor. 

Why didn’t we raise these issues years back? Why didn’t we stomp our feet and shout “Not fair! Our kids deserve better! WE deserve better!” 

We’re the ones in the trenches. We’re the ones who see how demoralized these kids get when, bladders full, noses running, stomachs growling they do their best and it’s still not good enough.  

I asked all this of a colleague recently. She listened patiently, then reminded me that we did complain. That we’ve been complaining all along, to principals, to administrations, to our local union, to our elected representatives, to the Massachusetts Teachers Association. We’ve been complaining. But no one’s been listening. 

"Why haven’t they been listening?"

“Remember?”  She gave me a funny look. A look that said, Silly thing. You know why. 

I shrugged. I wanted to hear her say it. I figured hearing the words would ease my guilt a little.

She smiled. It was an angry, you've got to be kidding me smile. “We’re a dime a dozen. We’re replaceable. We’re only teachers. No one ever listens to us. Remember?”