Public Schools' Annual Review

This May, all California public schools will administer the CST, or California Standards Test. This test is meant to measure the effectiveness of instruction and the level at which the students are achieving. In many ways, it does just that. The questions are based on a multiple choice format and the questions are created by a think-tank in Sacramento of educators, elected officials, and hired help. On the other hand, there are many aspects of education it fails to assess and therefore it is not the answer to the problems facing education. I am writing from the perspective of a public school teacher who has 9 years experience in the system.

Teachers are evaluated on a set of standards for the teaching profession, but the emphasis of the test results cannot be dismissed. When billions of dollars rest on the results of the test, it obviously is a factor. Schools can have serious consequences if they don't meet their CST targets and therefore hiring and firing decisions are inevitably being made in the interest of scoring higher on the test. So what does this test really tell us about what is happening in the classroom?

The truth is: not much. Teachers can and quite often do teach "to the test," leaving non-academic and socializing issues by the wayside of this supposedly "greater plan" called No Child Left Behind. With all allegiance being given to the test, PE and Social Studies get left behind as well. Science is tested at the fifth grade level, but since it is not at any others it is taught with less and less emphasis in public school. Are we to assume the future leaders of our civilization will not be needing social skills, science, and physical education? I find the lack of assessment in these areas quite troubling.

In the school day there is a measure set of minutes required by the state. Since the test has become the virtual sole barometer of how a school is performing, districts have given the minutes in their program to English Language Arts, Math, and Writing. While the higher performing schools are not mandated to produce a schedule of minutes that is so stringent, the lower performing schools who truly need the areas of socialization in their learning day are not getting those minutes they so desperately need. Can you imagine a future of low performing students with no social training? How can this be considered "No Child Left Behind." In so many ways I see this system leaving kids behind one after the other. This system needs to be revamped.

Another deficit of this system is it's failure to address the needs of special education. Under the current plan's language, every child in America will score 75% to 100% on this test by the year 2014. Schools that don't produce this result will be sanctioned and made Charter schools or subjected to a number of punitive options by the state. What about the kids that can't take a multiple choice test? And how will we decide what teachers have done the best they possibly can only to find the students don't care to bubble all the right answers? This is creating a level of stress among educators, students, and administrators that is not healthy in this educators opinion. In paying all allegiance to this test we may be getting some kids to do well on one test, which of course has its merits, but that the same time we are risking the loss of social skills and other aspects that are crucial to the civilization of tomorrow. Should this test have this much political and financial power? Should we tell children they are only as successful as they do on a multiple choice test? These are crucial questions the public needs to address as we travel increasingly closer to the 2014 deadline. Whe we get there, how will we gauge what children have been left behind? I would like to see it gauged by other factors than just this "almighty" test.