by Morton Mcinvale

Created on: June 30, 2009

No one outside the field of public education can truly grasp what a monster standardized testing has become. . .The standardized test - Criterion Referenced Competency Test (CRCT) in my case - is the machine driving public education today.

Oh. Superintendents won't admit it. Principals deny it. Teachers? . . .If they want to keep their jobs, teachers do what they are told - and teach to the test - making a professional and philosophic compromise with reality and ethics. For those who must compromise, instruction becomes an Alice in Wonderland world where the only reality (if it is) looms in the curious smile of the Cheshire Cat/Standardized Test..

Standardized testing does not impact teaching?

Think again.

Principals have committed suicide over their school's failure to make Annual Yearly Progress (AYP).

Superintendents bully principals over CRCT numbers.

With job security hinging on numbers and termination hanging over their heads, how can principals NOT let standardized testing dominate education? And with the trickle-down effect, how can teachers NOT let standardized testing seriously sway the way they might teach?

At the door to the school students are met by posters "179 Days Until the CRCT!" Similar posters assault them in the cafeteria, follow them along the halls. And we - as teachers - pretend that it does not interfere with their education or our teaching!

Sorry. I beg to differ.

Curriculum is designed around and coordinated with the CRCT/Standardized Test. Certain skills are taught on a certain day in a certain week. (And if good little teachers would do as they should, then since everyone is learning the same thing at the same time, hey! Why not have a robot in front of the white board? Cheaper. No health insurance. No confrontations.) At the end of each nine weeks, the Instructional Lead Teacher (ILT) gives students a CRCT-like test testing to see if teachers are teaching students to take THE TEST. In other words, test taking becomes paramount. Instead of improving and assisting teaching, the ILT becomes a bureaucrat generating, copying, pirating whatever tests she/he can find to test.

Exactly who and what is being tested in these miraculous multiple choice exams? When the principal pores and pores over the results as if magical moon dust miraculously found on the playground, what is it she is seeking?

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