A great way to save money!

It’s no secret that I’m not a big fan of the current occupant of the White House. However, amidst his deluge of cut and burn tactics early in this term of office, I hold out some hope for a very positive result.

What might that be? Well, if you’ve looked at your calendar and have read my column for a long time, you know that March is the advent of standardized testing every year in Minnesota. Yippee. You also know how much I despise this annual ritual of testing kids and making huge judgments based on a snapshot in time for a test that does nothing to hold students accountable for their effort.

So I’ve noted with great interest Mr. Trump’s desire to eliminate the Department of Education at the federal level. This is perilous in many ways, such as the billions of dollars in funding that go to things like special education, Title IX oversight (giving equal opportunities to boys and girls, especially in sports), and student loan assistance. I’m sure those would be farmed out elsewhere, but it’s kind of nice to have them in one central location, and I’m worried that by eliminating the Department of Education, some of the dollars that come out of there will disappear.

Standardized testing is mandated at the federal level. If states were to say no to these tests, they would lose money from the federal government. For one thing, this goes against our nation’s idea of states having the right to run their own schools without interference. Nobody is going to turn down money, but it is a form of interference.

Both the federal government and our own state government in Minnesota are looking to trim the fat, so to speak. Here’s your chance, politicians: Trim standardized testing and save money. How much? Here are the numbers found by the Brown Center on Education Policy.

In an average year, $1.7 billion dollars is spent on standardized tests. Yes, billion with a b. In addition, schools around the country spend an additional $669 million on other assessments to get kids ready for the big tests.

But wait, there’s more! The average student spends 20-25 hours a year taking standardized tests, including all those other assessments schools use to monitor progress. Again, those can be misleading depending on what kind of day each kid is having. I’ve heard stories (and seen it myself) where a student does poorly on one of those and is labeled as needing help, even if they show, every day in the classroom, that they are more than capable.

That’s 3+ class days worth of tests. When we hear about how valuable seat time is, this goes against that idea. School boards and administrators across the country should be joining with teachers to decry this continued abuse of our class time. And that doesn’t count all the time teachers take to teach to the test. 

If you don’t think that happens, stop by my classroom in the couple of weeks leading up to the MCA tests. We review ideas we’ve been working on all year but with a look to the standardized testing format, which means multiple choice questions. I would rather that my students can tell me what the main idea is in their own words than pick a vaguely worded phrase from a list of choices that are sometimes similar. 

We spend the day before the tests talking about poetry and similes and metaphors. It’s important to know and recognize figurative language, but how many of you are tested on interpreting poems in your life? 

All this wasted time could be better served to make our students better at reading and writing and math and everything else. The cost benefit of that is immeasurable. Instead, we continue to hammer on tests and what people think the scores mean. The cost of the tests could be money better spent on updating instructional programs and giving kids more opportunities in the world at large.

Or we could look at budgets and say that we need to cut things in education. That can be valid. But we should always start with the things that matter least, and tests fit that bill. They are actually insulting to teachers who know their students best. I can tell you who needs help the most in my classes, based on the work we do every day. Schools need more people and curriculum to work on interventions while classroom teachers keep working with the standards in our rooms. The money could go that direction too!

Again, if the President wants to cut funding, do it in cooperation with the people who work in the industry. Our state can also join in that, and I’ll be heading to St. Paul soon to visit with some of those powerbrokers. It never hurts to hear from all the constituents. If you feel as I do, I’m sure Gene Dornink and Peggy Bennett (our senator and representative) would love to hear from you!

Save big money! Eliminate standardized testing!

Word of the Week: This week’s word is onolatry, which is a devotion to foolishness, as in, “The onolatry shown by the government in insisting on standardized testing for most students was opposed vociferously by teachers.” Impress your friends and confuse your enemies!