HOW SHE SEES IT Real teaching suffers when testing pushed

By DOROTHY RICH
KNIGHT RIDDER/TRIBUNE
It can get confusing. There is so much discussion about testing and its positive effect on our education system that we can forget that tests do not teach. At best, they can only test. Testing our children on how well they read or do math is not the same as teaching our children to read or do math.
Teachers have been trying to get this message across for a long time. Only recently, however, in my experience as I talk to parents and visit classrooms, is it becoming clearer to parents that when we test as much as many systems do today (taking lots of school time and resources) something has to give. What gives, sadly, is real teaching.
My niece has volunteered several times this past month in her child's kindergarten in a good school. Each time, she reports, the teacher is sitting in the corner testing individual students. The other students are not being taught, doing really not much of anything. The teacher explained that it was test month. Up to this point, my niece really didn't have a sense of how much time testing took away from teaching. Nor do many parents.
Big test
A father of a third grader in another highly rated school told me about his conversation with his daughter about the big test she took the previous day. "It was so easy," she reported. "All the kids said it was too easy."
The test was probably too easy. Why should schools give really hard tests when in giving easier ones, test scores are higher, and everyone, especially the administrators, look very good.
Originally, more tests may have been seen as a way to monitor how well teachers do their job. What we've learned is that it's hard to teach and test at the same time.
"I don't feel smart anymore," said Alice to her mother when she came home from school last week. Alice is an almost all "A" student in fifth grade. Because her test score was a bit low, she was told that she could not work on the school newspaper. The paper, was reserved for students who got the highest test scores.
This isn't fair. It isn't right. It's educationally counterproductive. The mother was angry and worried for her child, yet she does not know what to do about it. Even if she did, she says that she feels helpless to make a difference.
This is so sad and makes me truly indignant. It's not because tests in and of themselves are bad, but because they are used so badly. The results, for example, of the end of year tests are often not even reviewed by teachers in the next grade when school begins again.
Practical ideas
What ought to happen to get the most of these time-consuming, expensive tests is to use their results quickly ... beyond sending the reports home. Parents need to know what to do to help children over the summer when many learning gains are lost. Parents need to receive from the school, specific and practical ideas for activities at home that teach to overcome learning problems identified by the tests. This is not too hard to do. It is the right thing to do if we are going to keep on testing and testing.
The impact of low test scores hits the child hardest, yet everybody is affected. With high scores, superintendents get bonuses. Property values go up. And that determines tax revenues.
We do need to know what children to know and don't know. Tests are but one way to find this out. Talking with children is another good way, and that often gets short shrift.
If we are going to keep testing, and clearly this seems to be ordained, whether it does good or not, then let's use the results effectively and compassionately.
X Dorothy Rich is founder and president of the nonprofit Home and School Institute, MegaSkills Education Center in Washington. Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune Information Services.