What does "teaching to the test" really mean?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If your kid is advanced you don’t want him be in a school that spend their time teaching to test.

Why?

Why do you think the school need to teach to test?

Nobody said that, you're just avoiding answering the question.

[Anonymous]

I taught in a Title 1 elementary school very focused on test scores. It’s a lot of worksheets in math and only focusing on standards that you know will be assessed. Everything else is secondary. It’s very similar in ELA. Lots of worksheets that are skill based - Find the main idea, What is the genre, identify story elements. No real reading for enjoyment. Lots of talking about how to take a test, test strategies, process of elimination etc. This isn’t just for a couple of weeks before testing starts. This is all year starting in September.

[Anonymous]

I had a professor in law school who asked the seminar "what does it mean to call someone an 'activist judge'?" After watching us all fumble it he said, "It means a judge who made a ruling you don't agree with."

"Teaching to the test" is a fall back for parents who want to discount good test scores at another school and/or dismiss less good scores at their own school.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I had a professor in law school who asked the seminar "what does it mean to call someone an 'activist judge'?" After watching us all fumble it he said, "It means a judge who made a ruling you don't agree with."

"Teaching to the test" is a fall back for parents who want to discount good test scores at another school and/or dismiss less good scores at their own school.

I am a teacher and agree 100% All the scrappy teachers in my school have low test scores. They always cry, "I don't teach to a test."

I have excellent scores because I teach the standards with rigor and critical thinking. I use academic language all the time.

[Anonymous]

I meant "crappy" above.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I taught in a Title 1 elementary school very focused on test scores. It’s a lot of worksheets in math and only focusing on standards that you know will be assessed. Everything else is secondary. It’s very similar in ELA. Lots of worksheets that are skill based - Find the main idea, What is the genre, identify story elements. No real reading for enjoyment. Lots of talking about how to take a test, test strategies, process of elimination etc. This isn’t just for a couple of weeks before testing starts. This is all year starting in September.

We are at a Title 1 school that I suppose "teaches to the test" but it doesn't look like this. There is tons of focus on the enjoyment of reading and the fun that can be had with math. But there is also a lot of attention paid to ensuring kids are acquiring specific building blocks for developing ELA and math fluency. And example of this combination at the Kindergarten level for ELA would look like this:

- 20 minutes a day dedicated exclusively to phonics, focusing on letter sounds, blends, sounding out cvc words, etc.
- 30 minute read along later in the day, reading a fun and engaging book that might connect to a broader focus area for the kids (like they might read a funny book about rain during a focus on weather and climate). The focus of the read along would be the story but the teacher might emphasize a concept from the phonics lesson during the reading along to encourages acquisition of that skill. For instance, they might have focused on the blends -ir, -er, and -ur during the phonics session, and the teacher might have the kids sound out the word "water" in the title or text of the book using what they learned that morning.
- A weekly homework assignment in which a child is assigned a few sight words that incorporate the -ir, -er, -ur blends and asked to practice writing these words on a worksheet. The homework assignment would be accompanied by a brief explanation for caregivers as to what the kids are working on to help them facilitate

None of that has to do with testing strategies. Perhaps they do of that in the testing grades, but my observation at the PK-1st level is that they absolutely focus on love and enjoyment of reading, and are. invested in the kids actually acquiring these skills, not simply learning to parrot them for testing purposes.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I had a professor in law school who asked the seminar "what does it mean to call someone an 'activist judge'?" After watching us all fumble it he said, "It means a judge who made a ruling you don't agree with."

"Teaching to the test" is a fall back for parents who want to discount good test scores at another school and/or dismiss less good scores at their own school.

I think we might have gone to the same law school

But I agree. If you really don't want your child's school to ever "teach to the test", you should send your child to a school that does not administer standardized tests. Go find a private Montessori or Waldorf school, they will not test your kid and they will not teach them with that test in mind.

All public schools are required to do standardized testing to evaluate the school itself, and many also use it to identify children you need to be accelerated or offered more challenging material, or to help compose learning groups. If you send your child to public school, they will "teach to the test." Some will do it well and some will do it poorly. If your kid attends public school and you are critical of another school for "teaching to the test", unlike your child's school, this is mostly an indication that you don't understand very much about your child's school curriculum.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If the test is a good test, then teaching to the test is one way to insure mastery of the material. If the test is a bad test, then it may be possible to do well on the test without understanding the material.

Most standardized tests are not robust to test specific prep. This is why prep courses can improve scores so much without actually teaching you anything useful.

This!

How does that apply in the context of DCPS schools?

An example of teaching to the test in DCPS is teaching kids how to type and use the mouse. Good keyboarding skills has nothing to do with your math ability, but definitely affects PARCC scores.

[Anonymous]

I am sure different schools "teach to the test" differently.

I had a kid at one school that was proud of not teaching to the test. They had the low test scores to match, and I can honestly say my kid learned next to nothing academic at that school.

Another kid is at a school where they do plenty of test practicing. They learn some test-taking skills but it is not overdone (I think test-taking skills are useful to have). They spend a lot of time going over the substantive material that will appear on the test and my kid has learned a TON from that school. His writing is great because he understands the concept of a main idea supported with evidence, for example. (This was never taught at the other school-- ELA was just reading at your own pace and a bunch of free writing).

Neither of these schools are Title I.

So beware of schools that brag about not teaching to the test. The best schools take test taking in stride. They know that it is a reality in education, but they are also confident that if they teach their students the material and some basic test-taking strategies and computer confidence, they will do well, without having to spend a year doing practice tests. It is possible that in Title I schools they will have less confidence in their student body and do more practice test taking. I have heard this anecdotally.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I had a professor in law school who asked the seminar "what does it mean to call someone an 'activist judge'?" After watching us all fumble it he said, "It means a judge who made a ruling you don't agree with."

"Teaching to the test" is a fall back for parents who want to discount good test scores at another school and/or dismiss less good scores at their own school.

I am a teacher and agree 100% All the scrappy teachers in my school have low test scores. They always cry, "I don't teach to a test."

I have excellent scores because I teach the standards with rigor and critical thinking. I use academic language all the time.

Please stop using the word rigor... its gross

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I had a professor in law school who asked the seminar "what does it mean to call someone an 'activist judge'?" After watching us all fumble it he said, "It means a judge who made a ruling you don't agree with."

"Teaching to the test" is a fall back for parents who want to discount good test scores at another school and/or dismiss less good scores at their own school.

I am a teacher and agree 100% All the scrappy teachers in my school have low test scores. They always cry, "I don't teach to a test."

I have excellent scores because I teach the standards with rigor and critical thinking. I use academic language all the time.

Please stop using the word rigor... its gross

Why is it gross? Let me guess, you want the work dumbed down. That is one of the main problems in education. Many teaches teach to the bottom. We need to teach students to think critically and apply their skills. That is rigor.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If the test is a good test, then teaching to the test is one way to insure mastery of the material. If the test is a bad test, then it may be possible to do well on the test without understanding the material.

Most standardized tests are not robust to test specific prep. This is why prep courses can improve scores so much without actually teaching you anything useful.

This!

How does that apply in the context of DCPS schools?

An example of teaching to the test in DCPS is teaching kids how to type and use the mouse. Good keyboarding skills has nothing to do with your math ability, but definitely affects PARCC scores.

.
My kid is in third grade and will take the PARCC for the first time this year. Does third grade PARCc require kids to type short answers or even essays? That will be a problem. He can write,but can barey type and would simply resort to typing the minimum possible when he would write more on paper.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I think it very much depends on what school level you are talking about, as well as what test is being taught to.

I think teaching to the test at the elementary level generally is just making sure kids are actually learning foundational skills in reading, writing, and math. As long as the school is well rounded and is also offering the arts, physical education, and other valuable instruction, and is a warm and welcoming place for kids, I don't actually mind if the curriculum is geared toward ensuring students can perform well on a test like PARCC. It's a way of ensuring some baseline knowledge, which is really valuable in ES.

I have mixed feelings about the practice in MS and HS. My observation is that this can make school at these levels really unpleasant for a lot of kids. Also, there are aspects of education at the HS level, in particular, that are very hard to test for on standardized tests. For math and reading comprehension? Sure, a test is going to usefully evaluate your skill level. For writing and critical thinking, it's much harder to do, and kids can learn to write test responses that satisfy the testing rubric enough to score well, without actually acquiring strong writing and critical thinking skills. A school that is unaware of this weakness in testing at this level would concern me. That doesn't me I don't think they should teach to the test, but it means that they better be teaching beyond the test as well.

And this is the part that goes by the wayside first and most often. There are so many things that are NOT taught becasue they spend weeks making sure the kids can do well on ONE narrow measure of something. I think teaching to the test is a major problem with public schools today. When you put so much emphasis on this one metric, you better believe that will be the focus, to the exclusion of anything not deemed important on the test. Why do you think there is almost no science instruction in elementary now. There is no SOL for it.

Signed - a teacher who left public school teaching because of this thinking. Trust me. The whole SOL thing is NOT serving your kids, making them smarter, or more accomplished.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I meant "crappy" above.

I like scrappy better

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If the test is a good test, then teaching to the test is one way to insure mastery of the material. If the test is a bad test, then it may be possible to do well on the test without understanding the material.

Most standardized tests are not robust to test specific prep. This is why prep courses can improve scores so much without actually teaching you anything useful.

This!

How does that apply in the context of DCPS schools?

An example of teaching to the test in DCPS is teaching kids how to type and use the mouse. Good keyboarding skills has nothing to do with your math ability, but definitely affects PARCC scores.

.
My kid is in third grade and will take the PARCC for the first time this year. Does third grade PARCc require kids to type short answers or even essays? That will be a problem. He can write,but can barey type and would simply resort to typing the minimum possible when he would write more on paper.

Life requires typing now. Would it be so terrible if your school taught to the test (i.e., teach basic typing skills) so that he could demonstrate his actual knowledge?