Alphabet Soup

It’s that time of year again. The moment where high school students across the county grab their lucky Number 2 pencils and sit for hours at a time in classrooms, computer labs, and gymnasiums, eagerly answering all sorts to questions about math and literature.

That’s right, next week area juniors will get heir first crack at the newly-revised SAT standardized high-stakes test, courtesy of the School District of Palm Beach County, which has offered the test to all district 11th graders the past few years as a means of helping boost their opportunities for higher education acceptance after they graduate.

About a year ago, Florida Gov. Rick Scott signed an executive order suspending the 11th-grade Florida Standards Assessment for English language arts, which helped (a bit) to lessen the overflow of alphabet soup tests our students are required to take yearly. I'm no fan of Voldemort, but it was (to his credit) one small step in the right direction. Unfortunately, it seems this action was the only step recently to reduce the number of days our students are forced to take a battery of tests assessing reading, writing, math, science, and history. Freshmen and sophomores are still taking the FSA (and will do so in the days following the SAT). In April and May, area students will take AP, Cambridge AICE, and International Baccalaureate subject area tests. And as if national- and state-endorsed testing wasn’t enough, there’s always the Palm Beach Performance Assessment thrown their way by the very district in which they live. And when autumn rolls around, the testing cycle begins all over again.

If our children were automobiles, this would be the equivalent of being in the shop every other day going through diagnostic tests to see how they are performing. Of course, these various assessments aren’t even truly “diagnostic” in nature; teachers and administrators don’t get to see the student responses to be able to truly analyze where improvements are needed in the teaching process, and even if they did get said results, it’s usually months later - and often, the students have different teachers by that point.

I believe there is a time and a place - and a purpose - for properly structured and presented testing. But one of the other huge issues is that the tests keep changing, and the bar keeps shifting as to what constitutes “passing” or “good” scores. If these tests are truly to incorporated into the formal educational process as a way of analyzing student learning, the legislature and testing companies have to stop making changes yearly on what seems to be a whim. The best way to truly assess learning is to use a stable method of assessment, and with structural changes taking place seemingly every year, there is no true way to measure results on a year-to-year basis.

I call, again, to end the madness. Let our students learn more; let our teachers educate more; let both groups test less.