What does "teaching to the test" really mean?
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Anonymous
This curriculum, based on Common Core, is especially harmful to low-SES students. Higher-SES students obtain a lot of vocabulary and background knowledge at home. The knowledge/vocabulary gap is not being addressed, which is one of the reasons why schools with largely SES students have higher test scores and why test scores continue to drop at middle and high schools. |
Anonymous
My bad. When I said all, I meant all DCPS schools. |
Anonymous
A curriculum could be a list of content and skills, allowing teachers to develop their own pacing schedule, using the strategies they know work best for their students. |
Anonymous
That’s not a well rounded curriculum. Come on. That’s teaching to the test. Diagnostic test given and then lessons are from the test and skills learned based on the test. How clearer can that be if not teaching to the test? |
Anonymous
But they do none of it in a library! |
Anonymous
Our DCPS doesn't either. I think 90% of these replies (aside from the ones from teachers) are just WOTP parents who are making assumptions about what they think must be happening at EOTP schools. |
Anonymous
Keeps the sex down though (see walls v basis thread) |
Anonymous
Or charters. I have never been at a school that teaches or cares about parcc, other than having to take the damn thing. |
Anonymous
This. You can clearly see the achievement gap from 3rd on and it continues to worsen as more time goes by in middle and high school. By the time you hit high school, the percentage of kids on grade level is in the single digits at some if these schools. Teaching to the test only gets you so far and some improvement in test scores at the low level elementary end. But that is when the buck stops. Without a solid foundational understanding and base content knowledge, there is no building blocks so it’s impossible to learn higher level math, reading comprehension/analysis, writing, science, etc… |
Anonymous
Nope, 17-year DCPS teacher at mostly WOTP schools, including Deal. |
Anonymous
No I’m sorry, you are talking about something else. You mentioned a “PARCC-like diagnostic test.” Except PARCC is not diagnostic. The tests you are talking about are levels tests, and are necessary for educators to know where students are at do that they can provide them with appreciate coursework, and also get a sense for whether this student needs acceleration or is maybe above grade level and needs additional challenges. The rest of what you describe has nothing to do with “teaching yo the test.” It has to do with being in a school or district with a rigid curriculum that does not offer teachers much leeway. DCPS is one such district— teachers are pretty limited in their ability to actually craft individualized curriculum here, and this is unsurprisingly one of the bigger complaints you will hear from teachers in DCPS. However, because DC has charters and school choice, this is a restriction for DCPS teachers but not for DC public school families. The idea is that if you don’t like the rigid DCPS curriculum, you can go to a charter, and all charters are free to develop their own curriculum. None of this has anything to do with teaching to the test, because you aren’t even talking about PARCC testing. You’re talking about diagnostic assessments. They do those everywhere. Even in private schools. |
Anonymous
I don’t think WOTP parents care enough about EOTP schools to spend any time thinking about them. |
Anonymous
You don't know what you're talking about. PARRC-like in that they consist of reading selections followed by multiple-choice, fill-in, sequencing items and constructed responses. Since they are given at the beginning of a unit, they are diagnostic. |
Anonymous
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I used to prepare students for the Virginia Writing SOL. For honors students I'd just say, hey, remember to read carefully and check your work. But for my "standard" classes where there were learning disabilities, English language learners, etc., we would spend a whole month doing practice questions. And yes, I'd teach them strategies like if it's asking which sentence is worded the best and you're not sure, pick the shortest answer. I was often praised by the principal for having higher test scores than other teachers.
No, I didn't become a teacher to teach to a BS test, but my students needed to pass to graduate and if it was all going to come down to a question or two, I was going to help them the best I could. I remember two brothers from West Africa. The older brother didn't have a chance of passing. The younger brother squeezed by with a 403 or whatever the lowest passing grade was that year. He played football and went on to college. He needed to pass that test. Was he a proficient writer? Well, maybe not. But I'm only one person and I did what I could for my students. I'll never forget how I called him up to my desk to tell him his score, and he turned around halfway and said, "I know I didn't pass . . ." and I said, "Oh, you didn't want to hear that YOU PASSED THE SOL?!?!?" and he was so happy. |
Anonymous
But teaching to an internally-administered diagnostic test is not "teaching to the test". It means you use internal testing to assess levels and is simply part of your curriculum. It is not what is meant by "teaching to the test." Usually when people level the "teaching to the test" criticism, what they mean is that a school is seeking to raise their overall scores on a test like PARCC (the scores for which are made publicly available and thus impact the school's public perception) but teaching kids how to excel on these tests without actually providing a well rounded education. It's usually coupled with criticism of such tests, because if it can be gamed in this way, it must not be a very useful test. You are talking about a total different thing. |