Not an especially captivating title but I have reached the point of having to respond to the notion that standardized, federally-mandated testing to measure students' progress is an effective and meaningful policy; to butcher Mike Myers' skit, standardized testing is neither effective nor meaningful - discuss.

 

    It is time that the field of education and those related to it come to the conclusion that assessment should be left to the classroom teacher as a tool for creating meaningful, engaging, challenging curriculum based on the progress made by their students. Even though I agree with the idea that assessment should be used as a means to communicate progress to parents and other stakeholders - that should never come before the best interests of students. Standardized tests (CAT - 5, WASL, and the like) are not effective because they only take into consideration topics and question types that fit a certain type of student; thus the moniker, standardized. If it could measure all the different types of knowledge, ways of expressing that knowledge and importance of the knowledge children have - it wouldnt be a standard because one does not, and, in all practicality, CAN NOT, exist. Alfie Kohn wrote a book entitled, What does it mean to be well educated? This is just one of his wonderful books and I recommend it. The question is clear - how can knowledge be standardized and who sets the standard? Common sense will tell you that different kinds of knowledge are important depending upon where and how one lives. Pragmatically speaking, a standard cannot be set. But, for the sake of argument, let us accept that a standard has been set. How can the material be meaningful or meaningfully presented?

 

    Creating a standardized assessment that is meaningful can provide a challenge for even the best teacher because a good teacher knows what is meaningful to one student may not be meaningful to another so how does it become a standard? So the idea of creating a meaningful standardized test is virtually impossible, but creating a meaningful assessment to determine student strengths, weakenesses and progress is not impossible.

 

    I taught the primary level assessment course at a small university for about five years and I always emphasized that assessment should be meaningful, ongoing, continuous and developmentally appropriate. Since it was the primary level I did model authentic assessment strategies such as anecdotal records, observations, performance assessments, interviews and other collaborative types of assessment. But in discussions with my students after they moved on to the upper elementary assessment class, I reiterated those same ideas about assessment at that level. The only advantage to the classroom teacher that federal, "fill-in-the-bubble" tests provide is one of expediency. But, the NEED for expediency is artificially imposed by each level of administration.

 

    Over the past two months (probably because the school assessment reports showing progress or lack thereof have come in), I have seen news byte after news byte showing teachers, principals, assistant principals, parents who work as school secretaries changing grades or test scores. I suggest that they do that in order to save face in the light of scrutiny. Schools that are underperforming as judged by No Child Left Behind (NCLB) feel a great deal of pressure to meet Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP) or be reconstituted as per the NCLB Act. But so many of theses schools have children that face so many more challenges than just learning grammar, math and science. They come to school hungry, dirty, ignored, underserviced and exposed to a variety of violent influences. How can we blame teachers for children failing tests that are ineffective in measuring what these children actually know and meaningless to children whose lives are filled with far worse influences than many children in other areas know.

 

    The State (of Oregon for example) already has standards and expectations for students to meet, my suggestion is to let teachers meet those standards in collaboration with children and parents, using engaging curriculum and measured by the teacher, not for a standardized score, but for progress in each student's understanding of the topic.

You can probably tell what my position is on spanking children. I will try to approach it clinically since the decision to spank is usually an emotional one rather than a cognizant one. From discussions with spankers and my own experience with spanking and not spanking, I have concluded three main factors are involved with the whole spanking or not spanking dilemma:

     upbringing or, "that's how I was raised and look at me."

     behaviorism or, "by jove, it works!" and,

     humanistic or, "yes it works, but is that what we really want?"

    During my own upbringing, I received less than my share of spankings. My parents weren't TOO big on hitting us as punishment for behavior. More often, my father would lecture us for an hour or so and as a teenager, I sometimes wished he would have hit us rather than talk and talk and talk. However, as an adult I appreciate that my parents wanted to talk to us and get some philosophical transformation rather than just blind compliance out of fear that we would get hit. I do recall one time that I called my brother a bad word and my mother's hand came out of nowhere to smack me in the mouth and it hurt AND scared the heck out of me. Then there was the time I experienced my big brother getting spanked - it is memorable because I remember he put a book in his pants and it broke the yardstick used to smack his bottom. He got a little bit more to compensate but it was what it was. I have seen my brother use corporal punishment on his sons but certainly not excessively and I am sure he is not a proponent.

    The idea that we raise our children the way we were raised isn't a novel one. There is an adage in teacher education that says, we teach the way we were taught. I will speak to the child-raising tendency to perpetuate the way I respond to the pedagogical one; all children are different and to suggest that using one specific method of responding to all of a child's behavior is just myopic and ineffective. That being said, too many parents use their parent's strategies becuse they haven't learned or developed strategies of their own - similar to teachers. If a student teacher hasn't experienced an event in the classroom - for example, a fist fight - then they may respond in a way that they have seen used in response to another type of dramatic behavior or not know how to respond at all and freeze up. Either way, it takes education to learn new ways to respond. Parenting doesn't come with a handbook so it isn't surprising that parents revert back to the way they were raised. In the case of spanking, it is a relic of a different time and I feel parents should learn new ways to deal with "misbehavior" (which is a whole 'nother discussion).

    Behaviorism teaches us, among other concepts, that a behavior is likely to be repeated if rewarded and less likely to be repeated if punished. Spanking embodies that concept. If a child exhibits an undesirable behavior, they get spanked and they are less likely to repeat it. Conversely, if a child exhibits a positive, desirable behavior, then they should get rewarded. However, if that was the case, parents would be "rewarding" children constantly because - believe it or not - children really do want to make their parents happy and behave as such most of the time.

    Spanking our children DOES work, no one can convince me otherwise. If a child is doing something and you hit them, they will most likely stop. But, stand at the door into Wal-Mart and when someone walks in, punch them in the face. Then, when they turn the other cheek and walk to the OTHER door, meet them there and punch them in the face. Most likely, they will not go to that Wal-Mart again. If a child does behavior A and you hit them - they may try behavior B. If you hit them again, they will stop behavior B and probably behavior A too. However, they may very well try behavior C. That Wal-Mart patron will probably go to a different Wal-Mart, they will probably tell a manager about the person punching them when they enter the building. Well, with your children you ARE the manager so they are helpless and they may try behavior C and exhibit the behavior somewhere else, like school, the playground or the babysitter's house. Regardless, you havent taken the time to teach them what the appropriate behavior is - you've only punished the bad choices. But wait, you DO teach them the right behavior, AFTER you punish them. My suggestion? Just teach them the right way without the aversive stimulus.

    So that is my conclusion, we probably spank because we were spanked. we spank because it works to stop a behavior. We spank, but God help me that isn't the way we want to raise our children. We don't want children to 1) be afraid of their parents, 2) learn that we deal with conflict or disobedience by hitting the offender and 3) perpetuate an environment of violence.

    Our children are people first - if you wouldn't hit another adult who doesn't do what you want, then don't hit a child ( I know that is a sticky one because people DO hit other adults when they don't get their way but that is a different sociopathy). Parents can learn to respond to their children in less violent ways. Don't kid yourself, hitting your children is violence. Whether or not you believe it is a legitimate way to raise your child - it is violence. Hitting is such a basic response, it is akin to anger in that psychologists suggest that anger is the externalization of another emotion usually anxiety, embarrassment, fear or humiliation. Hitting is the externalization of an emotion. The question I ask you to reflect upon is this, What is the emotion inspiring the hitting? Exasperation (That is it I can't take it anymore)? Frustration (I have told him time and time again)? Embarrassment (I can't believe you are acting like this in the store)? Offense(Who is this 9 year-old to be defying me)? The next time you feel your child needs corporal punishment, resist and ask yourself, why am I going to hit? Just once, stop and ask yourself that question.

   I don't expect that parents will stop hitting their children in response to misbehavior but it is my responsibility on behalf of the children leading us in the future to ask parents to stop hitting them in the name of teaching them the right thing to do. Spanking is the stark antithesis of "teaching" and I beg parents to learn new and more creative ways to teach their children well.

 

 

Many years ago as a student teacher, my instructor passed out an interesting flyer that responded to the comment that teachers are nothing more than "glorified babysitters." It basically "did the math" and found that if teachers were paid five dollars an hour for each one of their students for 180 days they would be worth about 9 million dollars or something unimaginable like that. {hmmm...lets see...30 children, 8 hour day, 180 days, 5 dollars a day...5 dollars a day for 8 hours = 40 dollars a day x 30 children = 1200, 1200 x 180 days...okay its about 216,000 dollars a year but then again - what babysitter only gets five dollars an hour for babysitting!?)

 

Back to the point, there is a New York city charter school who has attracted teachers from around the country with, at least, a salary of 125,000 dollars a year. Not bad change if you ask me but the rationale is what I am troubled by...it says that education can be reformed by the quality of the teacher in the room.

 

I agree that the quality of teacher is a factor - we need great teachers in our classrooms. However, how do we determine what is a great teacher? One who follows the curriculum carefully? One who responds to the emerging ideas from a more free-flowing curriculum? One who is very strict? One who has a much more family-style classroom? I don't know and further - not every style of "teacher" will develop a rapport with every child - so I do not know about this aspect I just don't believe that only a great teacher can offset the other factors in a child's success. There are more factors and here are some I ask you to consider:

* a child's socioeconomic background has a great deal to do with their success. I say this because there are differences in the way the receive services, are given support and perceive their own aspirations. I have read about and heard enough students, especially children of color, who do not even perceive of academic success and a future in higher education to know that being poor affects the way one builds their dreams.

 

* a child's motivation and development LONG before they enter the public school. Erikson, Piaget, Maslow and a cadre of others have provided the evidence that children's experiences in early childhood are formative in a way that we couldn't even imagine fifty or sixty years ago and it is high time that teachers (and critics of teachers) realize that they must be far more affective and family-style oriented in order to undo years of influence during infancy.

 

* freedom from prescribed curriculum. Teachers need to be left to their own devices to create student-centered curriculum that responds to the needs of children. Standardized, federal tests that take four days to administer and three weeks of preparation are taking over curriculum planning and children suffer. Time and again folks like Carol Ann Tomlinson have talked about providing appropriate curriculum for gifted children when the truth is teachers ought to do better than their best to provide curriculum that relies on his or her students' interests or ability level (and even then differentiate those lessons).

 

* finally (though not exhaustively), money for resources outside of the classroom. As I have written before, children's success in education could be dramatically increased if their families didn't have to worry about certain things like food, toiletries, social services, health insurance, and so on. So rather than spend 125000 dollars on a teacher - give the teacher 100,000 dollars and spend the other 25,000 on health services or a center for social services or a bank of toiletries and clothing or a food bank near or on the school site for families so that mothers (and sometimes fathers) aren't forced to have three jobs, no time for their children and exhaustion when they finally do have time.

 

Like I said in a class of pre-service teachers who were earning their ESOL licensure - we have to stop talking about what we are going to do for english language learners or children in poverty - because we are no longer "preparing for their arrival" - they are here. We can no longer wait for it to rain to crack open the rainy day fund - its storming - its flooding - its time!