Posted on: Friday, March 12, 2004
ISLAND VOICES
Testing: It's not the answer
By Kalaukieleula Hergenrader
What teachers need — beside committed students and parents — is smaller classes and longer school days.
We beg; we offer bribes, McDonald's, CD player, a dance; and then we badger. The test wants a narrative of several pages, and they write one three-sentence paragraph and quit.
Then I come unglued. They can do better, and a few, a very few, do. It takes a lot of energy to badger them with little return.
I'm tired of the teacher bashing. You have not a clue of what we have to endure.
First thing in the morning I have a stoned student, who is now at the intermediate level, in my classroom at the elementary school. He came to say hello and wants his father shot. He's living in a foster home because his father threw him out because of drugs.
Never mind this student was sent to Hawai'i when he was in the fifth grade from the Mainland because his mother couldn't manage him. Now in the eighth his father can't manage him.
And you want him to pass a test? Kids with drug problems and liabilities are exponential. Parents do drugs and their babies pay for it with short-changed brains.
And I am expected to fix it. So I have students who don't have a functioning system for connecting abstractions like multiplication or sequencing of events to do a logical summary.
I am here because I, along with a core of teachers, believe that we have something more to give to these students and we choose to be here. We choose to be among the socially and economically removed, which includes poor testing scores and poor academic involvement.
Research says this economic group values social alliances, brand status and resource connections. This means they value friendships; they value the ornamentation of status, cars, clothes and elaborate birthday parties. They generally have a negative view of schooling. After all, the parents are OK and they didn't enjoy any academic acclaim, so why should the next generation need to do any better?
Our Adequate Yearly Progress audit showed lack of parent involvement. Parents show up at school meetings when we offer food. When I call home to voice a concern about extensive absence, the parents call the principal to complain about my calling.
We teach to the state standards and the larger national standards through the America's Choice Curriculum. We as teachers are driven to change the future for these students, but it requires smaller student-teacher ratios, and longer school days.
We offer free tutoring under No Child Left Behind. Yes, a few families take advantage and follow through, but most disappear after a few weeks.
They need to be required to stay in school longer. We need smaller class sizes and longer days to manage the student deficiencies.
The test will only make a difference when the students have the consequence of their scores, remediation to pass the test or retention until they do.
Otherwise they will exert their independence and ignore the test.
Kalaukieleula Hergenrader is a public school teacher who lives in Wahiawa.
Testing isn't a valid assessment for the efforts of teachers in the classroom, because these students simply will not do the test.
