Testing and Telling It Like It Is

I wrote a piece for the New York State United Teachers on how testing has affected me personally as a mom. This is a reprint of that article. 

Speaking of telling it like it is, I'm over at MamaPop today with my thoughts on the new Great Gatsby movie. Hint: slapping one Jay-Z song in the trailer isn't enough to get me to go see that movie.

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Parent perspective: It’s just a test – even in Illinois

This isn’t just about The Test. Capital T, capital T. What we do to students in the American Public School system is test them and we do it a lot. But, it’s just a test. What’s happening with school testing is the problem. We’re using it in ways assessments were never intended nor does it make any sense. Not to me as a mother of a child whose entire education has been impacted by the over emphasis on using tests to make children feel like everything is wrapped up in that one thing.

I took my son out of private school when he was in 4^th grade.  I was grateful that he received a good, solid foundation of phonics and loves to read and talk about what he’s read with me, but I was sad that he had to leave his friends behind that he’d met 5 years prior when he started Kindergarten. He brought home colorful drawings and the occasional drill-and-kill worksheets, but I knew I had to get him out of that school because they didn’t know the first thing about dealing with a child who learned differently than what they were used to with their population.

In some ways, leaving that school behind was both a blessing and a curse. A blessing because some of the things he would learn in the public neighborhood school was superior to the way the private school would go as he got older. A curse because now Mason was under the domain of a system that would test him as much as they possibly could. 

I have many issues with standardized testing for children because, in Illinois, we have yet to experience the continuum of learning that should happen when you take hours and days away from students in order to get them to take the same test in the same way. In 4^th grade he took his first ISAT test, got the results, and felt terrible about himself. In Illinois, we use the Illinois Standard Achievement Test from grades 3-8 and use the results as a measure of No Child Left Behind. Of course, we got the results when he had begun 5^th grade and, by then, we were already on to the drills of the 5^th grade test. The same thing happened every year thereafter and I can tell you, as the mom of a child who doesn’t test well to show what he’s mastered during a timed assessment, testing has always been a horrible time for our family.

Starting in 6^th grade, we saw his classroom academic grades follow suit. He struggled and we fought with the school to get him a 504 Plan to accommodate his needs. Under the Rehabilitation Act and the Americans with Disabilities Act, schools can write 504 Plans to help general education students by making modifications that allow teachers to make accommodations in the classroom.

During basketball season we saw a spike in his grades because he wanted to be eligible to play sports and we experienced a lot of tears during those months. Frustration for school and of not being understood in his learning manifested itself in our home by rearranging his bedroom (taking everything out and allowing him a Zen-like experience) and implementing behavior modification that we hoped would help him become more organized. I had hoped that, because I am a teacher and can speak educationese, that it would help him be a better student and that I could provide as much direct instruction for my son as his teachers did during the day.

By 8^th grade, we failed to get the 504 and the basketball coach, a new coach to the school, found out how much Mason struggled with grades and decided not to allow him on the team so he wouldn’t have to hassle with him.

That’s when my son gave up on school. This trajectory we saw made high school hellish for him (and his parents) and testing just another way to prove he didn’t know anything. Or so he felt. When we talked to him about doing well in school his constant complaint was that he would never get good grades on the tests he took. The ISAT, the Prairie State Achievement Exam, the ACT, and the myriad district assessments absolutely killed the spirit of learning for my son. 

My son, Mason, with his cousin on his recent college graduation.

This proves quite the conflict for me: after he entered high school, I went back to school to earn a Master’s degree in educational administration. I went into the very position whose charge is to ensure that every child is tested. As a young teacher I learned quickly to steer clear of the teacher’s lounge. I didn’t want to get infected with the nasty attitudes of the veteran teachers who pointed a finger in the air and declared, “They keep making us do the same old thing! Wait long enough and something new will come around but it’ll be old! They’ll just have a new name for it!”

I fancied myself as a rebel, an innovative teacher who inspired her students and changed things up with her desks making the shape of a butterfly instead of the aimless rows that lined up for yawn-inducing lectures.  I stayed out of those places where I could be corrupted into hating the system in which I worked.

To some degree, I have remained a rebel. Sure, my job requires that I contact families whose children don’t show up for the standardized test, but I also get to be the one who answers their questions about missing school for them. One mom called me last year to say that her husband would be having surgery for his cancer and that she was so, so sorry that she was taking her children out of school to travel 4 states away for it during the ISAT.

“Are you joking me?” I asked her. “This is your family. Your LIFE. Take them with you for crying out loud. It’s just a test.”

I still believe that. It is just a test. Just one piece of information we use. But it’s in danger of being tied to teacher evaluations (a truly monstrous idea) and now that some lawmakers have lazily adopted ALEC sample bills and brought them into policy, states are furiously vying for a shot at the almighty dollar and are pushing through the Common Core Standards that will continue to kill creativity for children and provide ample test anxiety for them. Teachers and administrators have not even had time to field-test the standards on assessments. In fact, many teachers I know are apprehensive of using the new evaluative tools that tie student achievement into their effectiveness.

Systemically speaking, it’s wrong and destructive to schools and children like my own who have had their futures shaped by schools using the assessment data in unproductive ways. Experienced teachers know that it’s unwise to test students on material which they have yet to practice teaching especially since states are faced with massive cuts to staff and resources in the midst of this. We aren’t connecting their learning in the ways we’ve been trained and we would do well to slow the emphatic standardized testing campaigns down until we know they won’t hurt children.

We just don’t have the data to support that right now.

Living Below the Line: Day 4 Recap

There's no video recap tonight because I'm ridiculously tired and it occured to me that I've been trying to post twice a day here and I wrote two pieces for Babble, a post on celebrating girls for Little Pickle Press, and my piece for MamaPop. On top of that, someone called in a favor last night and needed a quick freelance article that I whipped up because it's a topic I know well. I also worked at my day job on a particularly strenuous week and supervised the World's Longest Track Meet during which someone close to the track was firing up the BBQ grill. Torture.

There's so much that's bothering me through this challenge. Food is everywhere but it's not for everyone. I noticed at work that someone left a Jiffy Peanut Butter to-go cup in the kitchen and I thought, "That's way too expensive but awfully convenient. I wish I could take along snacks like that." After that, I noticed that one of my co-workers left an empty yogurt cup on the counter and when I bent down to look at it I laughed at the very pretentiousness of the marketing. 

Vanilla agave flavored New Zealand style artisan yogurt. I'm sure you're delicious, but that name cracked me up.

You know how when you buy a new car and then start driving it and it feels like you see it everywhere? You pass other cars and notice it in parking lots and everywhere you go. That's what it's been like this week except you notice all the other cars - the good ones (like yours) and the bad ones (different). I've noticed good food and bad food all week long and make comparisons every time. I read an article about "organic" food and cackled at the line where it talked about how people choose organic because they don't want to ingest pesticides. I call shenanigans. Poor people don't want to ingest pesticides, either, but we produce foods with GMOs and sell it cheaply to them. 

It's all ludicrous and maddening.

I did all that working and writing and supervising while eating poorly designed food in the best way The Cuban could possibly prepare it on a dollar and a half. I've noticed, after 4 short days, that my skin is breaking out on my face and I've lost a bit of weight in some places but my stomach is poofing out a bit from all the carbohydrates I'm consuming. Without being too graphic let's just say that THINGS AREN'T WORKING LIKE THEY SHOULD. We are convinced that carbs make you lazy because they're so lazy. They don't even evenly distribute around your body when you eat too much of them and they're so lazy that they just hang around the middle of your body. 

Carbs can't even make it down past the middle.

Stupid, useless, lazy carbs. 

So, tonight's recap post comes in the form of a message I got from a friend who is a teacher. I've only edited it enough to take out identifying characteristics but that's ancillary to the message.

The message is The Thing.

Okay, something happened today that knocked me WAY off balance, then broke my heart, then made me think of your food challenge (very brave of you, by the way). I took my Scholastic Bowl team to Baskin Robbins on Wednesday as an end-of-season treat. I got my husband to 'sponsor' our trip and I told the kids that they could get anything (but just ONE thing) that they wanted.

They were VERY carefully asking questions like, "Can I get the LARGE smoothie?" and "Is it okay to get TWO scoops?" My husband gave me plenty of money, so I said, "Sure! Anything you want!" We ate until they simply couldn't eat any more (one very little guy even got teary-eyed that he couldn't finish all of his and it would melt if he tried to take it home).

We walked back to school, they whipped up a Thank You poster for me to take to my husband for the ice cream treats and while they did that, I cleaned up my room for the day. I put the poster in my bag with ten thousand papers to grade and (gasp) forgot to get it out for my husband last night.

We got it out tonight and I read their comments (here's the heart-breaking part) and FOUR of the kids commented about how much they enjoyed their FIRST TRIP TO BASKIN-ROBBINS. Another one said, "Thank you for my very first banana split!" Seriously. I don't know why this left me speechless, but it did. I mean, these kids are so very bright, they possess so much knowledge, I guess I just assumed...I don't know...maybe that they all came from 'families of means', families with disposable incomes that included trips to BR. I know that probably sounds awful, but after spending all of this time with these kids, I just felt like I knew them all really well and then...anyway, it made me appreciate what you're doing on a whole new level. So I guess what I'm trying to say is this -- thanks for the insight. Seriously.

It's stories like this that make this all give me a new perspective on hunger and poverty. One of my greatest struggles this week is trying not to be constantly infuriated with the way we feed people in the world. On that front, I've failed. My anger is palpable at this very moment.

Thank you for hanging in there with me this week. Together, we've raised $650 for the World Food Program USA and, while this is merely an inconvenience for me, it has been difficult, but only because we can actually fix this problem.

Living Below the Line: Day 4

All this week The Cuban and I have talked about food, thought about food, and consumed some of the worst food choices we've eaten since the two of us met. This morning, he guest posts for me as the man who lives with me as I embark on challenges and strange journeys such as this. 

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Everyone who knows me, and even some of you who don’t, knows that when it comes to the kitchen, hubris is my middle name. No challenge is impossible, no recipe too big.

Of course, Kelly understands this side of me better than anyone so it is not at all uncommon for her to sign “Us” up for numerous cooking challenges. This is how this conversation usually goes:

“Oh, by the way, I signed us up for a cooking challenge”

“Great! What is it?”

“We have to prepare an original dish using wheat flour, pinecones and turtle eggs.”

“Umm… OK.  When is it due?”

“Tomorrow.”

“I’ll be at the grocery store.”

So, it was in this vein that I approached this Live Below The Line challenge. In all fairness to Kelly, she gave me ample time to get prepared for it this time but I really didn’t take it all too seriously.

Until I went to the store preparing to feed her for 5 days on $7.50.

Kelly has always been amazed at the speed in which I can get in and out of a grocery store with a week’s worth of groceries. I have actually banned her from going to the store with me because inevitably when she does we have to stop and talk to past students of hers; old colleagues; the neighbor who used to live two doors down. She knows everybody! This always doubles or triples my shopping experience. So I go by myself.

When I do go to the grocery store I stick to 2 simple rules.

1. Shop the edges of the store. Nothing in the middle has any real nutritional value and it tastes terrible, and

2. Don’t buy it if you can make it yourself. It will taste 10 times better. This shortens my time in the store since I don’t have to do the middle aisle slalom.

To stay on budget I could abide by neither rule.

That’s when the seriousness of this challenge began to dawn on me.

Heading into Day 4 I can tell you that my cavalier approach at the beginning sort of shames me. I realize now that for Kelly and I this is just a challenge. 5 days. If you think about it you could do anything for 5 days if you wanted to badly enough. The light at the end of the tunnel is visible even before you begin rolling down the tracks. For the 1.4 Billion people who live like this every day there is no light. Just an endless tunnel.

Although I’m not an official registrant for Live Below The Line I have been eating almost all the same meals as Kelly. My only exception is my morning K-cup of coffee. Yesterday I went over budget for myself by 38 cents so today looks like a long day as I try to make that up.

How this had affected me

I can tell you that the physical manifestations, whether real or imagined, are enormous. Everything from dizziness to moments of confusion doing the simplest of tasks (At one point yesterday I found myself so addle-brained that I had to use my phone calculator to add 50, 24 and 17). The odd part is that hunger isn’t really one of them. My mother, being the country minister’s wife on a tiny budget she is, taught me about stick-to-your-ribs type meals and that has greatly helped in us being full if not necessarily satisfied at the end of a meal.

I have tried to explain to a few people what we are doing and why and I have come to realize that until you do it you cannot fully understand the problem these people face on a daily basis. I think about the food we have thrown out because nobody wanted “leftovers again?” I think about the times I went to the store and overbought which caused us to subsequently overeat. I think about the times we complained about how we were so full we felt miserable. There are people in this world who will never ever have the opportunity to say that, who will go their whole lives without ever knowing what a full belly even feels like.

Will Kelly and I change any of that in these 5 days? Probably not. And it’s that feeling of hopelessness that I can only imagine these people waking up to every day that brings tears to my eyes as I write this.

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The Cuban and I have decided to continue raising money even though I blew past my goal last night! ($500 was an arbitrary number I came up with that seemed challenging enough and now I realize I should have aimed higher.) It came when I read on Twitter last night that someone wanted to support me and would donate anything over the allotted $1.50 per day that she spent for the week. By the end of the week, we will calculate what we would have spent plus how much the leftover food costs and donate that money.

We have also chosen to donate any leftover canned food and pasta we bought for the challenge to the Central Illinois Foodbank.  (The CIFB also added one of my posts to their tumblr site and how cool is it that a food bank has a tumblr? That is so dope.)