I read an article recently about anger. The author talked about reasons we get angry, how to deal with anger, and what happens if we don’t deal with that rage in a good way. The basic message was that it’s okay and normal to get angry, but we need to handle it correctly so we don’t harm our relationships because of it.
I get angry. There are things that perturb me and will trigger me pretty quickly. There are other things that simmer and come to a gradual boil. I try to monitor those so as to not allow the pot to boil over and create a mess.
You get angry. There are items and people who you have no time for. There are ideas that are presented which you find annoying and not worth your time. You, like me, probably have times you’ve shown your anger that you wish you had back.
We wouldn’t be human if we didn’t get upset at times. We should rightly lose our temper if we or our families are threatened in some way. Still, even then, unless it’s an immediate emergency, we can probably try to take a minute to calm down prior to going after someone via a phone call, email, or, worst of all, social media.
I’ve found something that I am often angry about. In fact, I find new and creative ways to express my anger. That’s right, it’s time for my annual rant about standardized testing!
Here’s a new reason to take umbrage at these wastes of time and money, as pointed out by one of my peers: mental health. Schools and the education industry are really ramping up recognition of mental health issues with our students, rightly so. We have so many kids dealing with so many things in their lives. Many of them are dealing with anxiety, depression, and a myriad of other debilitating problems.
If you’ve got those kinds of things to deal with, why in the world would you care about a standardized test that the government requires schools to administer? It means zero to students as far as how it affects them. There is no reward for doing well and no punishment for doing poorly. If you score significantly higher than you did the previous year, the state does not send you a shiny certificate. If you drop in a massive way, there are no repercussions.
So why care? If you’re a kid who is dealing with some issues at home outside the normal ones that all teenagers face, what is a reading or math or science test going to offer you? If you see divorce, abuse, poverty, hunger, etc., why not just click through some random answers and reach the end of the test as quickly as possible?
On the other end of the spectrum, we also have students who would like to do their best. They believe in trying as hard as possible on everything they do. But they also have some anxiety. They put pressure on themselves to do well on things; if they struggle or don’t meet their own expectations, it’s crushing.
So for those students, throw the anxiety of what’s called a high-stakes test, something we just shunt aside valuable class time for every year, and see how they function. These are kids who put massive pressure on themselves every time there’s even a pop quiz. Schools work with these kids to learn how to handle failure or not even meeting their own expectations every bit as much as we help those who struggle with anxiety over things in their home lives they can’t control.
All of this makes me angry. We have to balance a lot of things for these kids. We have to be empathetic to bad things going on, while we also need to hold kids accountable to use school as an escape from those bad things and find paths to escape those situations by graduating from high school. Finding time to take test after test after test, things that we can’t say will impact that goal, seems meaningless. “Will this affect my grade? Will I graduate if I don’t pass an MCA test?” Nope.
My daughter has figured out strategies to take tests like these. She generally does quite well. However, I pulled her files and printed off all the standardized tests she’s taken in her school career, all the way back to elementary school. Some of these are government-mandated and others are ones our school makes kids take in the scurrying efforts to try to do well on those state tests.
I printed off 31 pages.
This is getting out of hand. These go back to second grade. Each page has multiple tests. The total I got was 104 tests.
104 tests. In ten years. Do that math.
I’ll do it for you. That’s an average of just over ten standardized tests a year. Most of that has reams of data that is nearly impossible for teachers to sort through. The MCA tests give so little data that they really don’t give a good picture of where my students struggle.
Regardless, there are a lot of ways to see how a student performs at different tasks in reading and math. Most of them are not pressurized like this, thus making them more accurate in their measurements. Part of it has to be the feel the teacher has for a student’s abilities.
At the end of the day, this simply has to end. I’m angry just typing this. Luckily for me, one way to ease out that anger is through writing about your feelings.
There. I feel better now. But not as good as I’ll feel when these horrible tests disappear.
Word of the Week: This week’s word is quietude, which means a state of calmness, as in, “Though there seemed to be quietude as the classroom was silent during testing, the underlying anxiety was palpable.” Impress your friends and confuse your enemies!