Teachers everywhere, rejoice: school's out for the year, am I right? Well, sure, you still have to show up everyday and, well, do stuff I guess. I mean, the education part is done, now it's just time to, what, watch movies, have extra-extra recess, and maybe some heavily sustained silent reading?
Seriously though, in most cases, the big state tests are done, so there must not be anything left to teach. We wouldn't want to start anything new right now, would we? There's roughly six weeks to go and then you have that whole summer learning loss. Might as well hold off for now and wait until August when they're some other sucker's responsibility.
Now, I kid a little bit, I do, but we need to think about this honestly for a moment. And try to listen very carefully for the continued reverberations of the collective sigh exhaled by millions of educators and students in the last few weeks, and perhaps a few more ahead in some states.
Many in public education, from the top on down, finally get some relief after the last bubble is filled and those test booklets exit the building. Scraps of curriculum commence, a few bits and pieces of science, maybe a science fair, a field trip or two, and the obligatory end-of-the-year celebrations. HAGS, have a great summer!
But let's be real about this: from my perspective, and this could differ in other contexts, the post-test relief and the sort of hodgepodge of directionless teaching in lieu of test preparation are documented phenomena within schools. I've both seen it as an outsider and experienced it as an educator. Both the adults and the students stage some serious countdowns and many sort of wander the building, asking each other, "What are we still doing here?"
When the tests become the cardinal drivers of education, as schools and teachers are penitent before the almighty scores, there is this erosion of those other things we imagine should be part of being educated. Other untested subjects or skills (e.g., science, social studies, music, art, etc.) fade into the background and it takes a special brand of dedication to resurrect them.
Now, if you take the state of Maryland where I work with teachers, you have a system that operates from roughly March one year to March the next. That is, say you're a fourth grade teacher. You assume that the previous third grade teachers of your students, and they can come from numerous settings, began teaching material that may appear on the fourth grade test after they've taken the third grade test. When they come to you in August, you sort of start the year reviewing or re-teaching that material while beginning new topics until the tests the very next March. You follow?
Thus, your students' tested school year basically begins somewhere else, in perhaps another school or at least another classroom, for a few months before it abruptly ends in mid-June, then begins anew in your room now for the next, say, seven months until the tests come up again. Here's the rub, and this gets to how I opened this post: as the educator, you cross your fingers that the previous teacher, for those few months after the March testing, didn't get too distracted with all that silly stuff, like science or social studies, and they began from day one after those tests with new testable material. But lo and behold, if you've taught, you know what I know: that both students and teachers sort of feel like school's over after those tests, and who can blame them with how much attention is paid?
Let me be clear: this is not about changing the testing schedule, which to me would be common sense (really, who sets March as a test date?), and this is not about year-round schooling. What I've described here is yet again further evidence for nothing other than the basic stupidity underscoring test-driven education. You can argue with me all you want, I'm happy to debate. Yet, I will state from experience with all due intellectual rigor: test-driven accountability models based on corporatized ideologies are so hopelessly asinine that I can't possibly refer to them any other way.
Teachers, and most students, are fallible, human creatures. You do a job long enough, you naturally seek efficiencies and ways of doing things more smoothly. This is precisely what's going on in classrooms. You have teachers and students who know how they're being evaluated. They know what counts and what doesn't. And when what counts is finished, they're finished. Look folks, you want this to happen, fine. But if you don't, then get rid of all this testing. It's that simple.