New York City

OPINION: Are test boycotts a growing trend?

May 6, 2014 By Raanan Geberer Brooklyn Daily Eagle
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A recent incident at International High School at Prospect Heights, covered in the Brooklyn Daily Eagle, in which teachers at the school refused to administer a city-mandated writing test could be a sign of things to come.

Thirty teachers at the school signed their names to a letter that listed objections to the test and asked Schools Chancellor Carmen Farina to allow teacher-based assessments as a replacement. The teachers claim that the students, many of whom hail from other countries and are just learning English, struggled with the test and found it too difficult.

The wonder is not that this has happened. The wonder is that it didn’t happen sooner, and that it hasn’t happened in more places. At International High School, the trigger was a test that was not appropriate for foreign-born students who were in the process of learning English. At other schools, the trigger might be different.

At the bottom of this issue is the fact that a series of bureaucracies—federal, state and city—keep imposing more and more standardized tests on schools, with little thought of how this will impact teachers, principals and teacher’s aides. In my day, you had only the Regents, the SAT and the Iowa Tests. Now, there are probably three times as many standardized exams. If a teacher has to meet the curriculum, prepare students for the Regents and prepare for five or six standardized tests per year, in addition to coming up with creative, imaginative lessons, they are on the road to having an anxiety attack.

The worst thing is that one arm of the bureaucracy apparently doesn’t listen to another. The federal government, when thinking up a test, doesn’t pause to ask, “Wait a minute! Do certain states already have similar tests? And if so, shall we have a waiver for these tests in those particular states?”

Maybe it’s time to declare a moratorium on any additional standardized tests. It’s also time to give more power back to the teachers. What is so terrible about teachers giving their own assessments of students’ work? Isn’t that what teachers are there for?

Above all, let’s give teachers and principals more freedom in creating their curriculums. What may work in one community may not work in another. In an upstate community where half the people hunt and fish, using these activities as a way to teach a particular lesson in biology may be appropriate. It wouldn’t work in Brooklyn Heights or Brighton Beach. Conversely, using different types of bricks and stones found in tall buildings to teach an earth science lesson can work in New York City, but it wouldn’t work in Binghamton, where tall buildings are few and far between.

I can understand why the powers that be want standardized tests. After all, if a student transfers from a school in Brooklyn, N.Y., to a school in Brooklyn, Iowa, it helps to have a recognized means of showing the student’s learning level so that the new school won’t have to give him or her a series of tests from scratch. But there has to be a happy medium.

The fact is that more and more, bureaucracies are treating public school teachers like useful idiots who are incapable of making their own decisions. This can only hurt teachers, students and principals alike.

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