The Impact Of High Stakes Testing on MCL

Testing time is here again. The idea of gathering more data is a noble one, but unfortunately, high stakes testing can have some negative impacts on the MCL classroom. Here are two that I've found particularly troublesome.

Curriculum Sequencing: In a utopian scenario, students would have the freedom to move through groups of standards in the order of their choice.  In other words, a student would be allowed to tackle the Measurement Topic of Informational Reading in September, November, May, at any time of year. Unfortunately, high stakes testing puts pressure on teachers in an MCL classroom to adhere to a tighter sequence of instruction. For example, if there are certain skills/content that are stressed in a mid-fall assessment, a teacher might feel pressure to ensure that students engage in that content just prior to the testing. This makes sense because, even if two students have learned the content equally well, if only one of those students engages in the content immediately prior to testing, that student is more likely to have easy mental access to the knowledge/skills that are being tested. Another way to think about this is that a student might know what he/she had for dinner last night, but that same student might not remember what he/she had for dinner last month even though the student did know the content (the menu) in those few weeks after eating. Like an old phone number, content is simply harder to retrieve as time passes. Therefore, it makes perfect sense for teachers to focus on tested content just prior to testing. However, the result is that a layer of student choice is stripped away which in turn can negatively alter engagement.

Curriculum Stratification: Back in the utopian world, all content is equally valued in general, with some content being valued more or less by individuals. In the reality of high stakes testing, some content is given higher value than others. Teachers know full well that math and English are at the top of the heap when it comes to national priorities, followed closely by science.  The rest, including social studies (the study of which was ironically one of the primary reasons that public education began in the United States), are valued less. How is this message sent to schools? Through testing requirements and the lack thereof. I faced this pressure this year in my MCL classroom. I found that several students were spending "too much" of their time focusing on social studies content instead of spending more of their time and effort in their study of English. I resisted the temptation to force a redirection on the students but can't help but worry that their reading scores on spring assessments may be negatively impacted. For now, the best I can do is try to merge the literacy and social studies content to the extent possible without turning off to social studies those who struggle with literacy. In other words, I'm feeling pressure to work the system instead of having the system work for me.