High Stakes Testing

   I read a professional book recently that had an extremely fascinating and irresistible title. The big idea of the book, reflected in the tempting title, was that teachers should never work harder than their students. The book was well written, had some novel ideas, and is guaranteed to make teachers who think their students are suffering from an overload of entitlement to vigorously nod their heads. But, I couldn’t get passionately excited about the book. You know what I mean- I didn’t call or text colleagues to tell them to run out immediately and buy the book before the book stores sold all of their copies.
Why?
The book never really found the “sweet spot” for its declared premise. How a teacher can work less but student would learn more. Sure there was a lot talk about how teachers should not take on all the responsibility for making certain that their students learn something. There was a lot of space in the book devoted to short cuts teachers can use, and “tricks” to shift the work load to the students.

   The problem with the book, in my judgment, was that it was written as a how to book that somehow missed the most important how to. Teachers are really unaccustomed to the idea that their students are fully responsible for their actions, at least in the academic arena. In the classrooms I visited over the past several months it was a rare moment that a teacher showed students how to take responsibility by modeling the habits and methods of the responsible learner. Teachers spend far too much time TELLING students how to do things and not enough time SHOWING students how to be self reliant learners.

   Take, as an example, the fourth grade reading class I observed recently. The read-aloud performed by the teacher was exceedingly painful to watch. The teacher asked dozens of questions during her read-aloud. Her method was to ask questions and then immediately tell the students what to think. Never once did she entertain the notion that it might be a good idea to use a think-aloud to model reading strategies the students might find helpful for purposes of thinking about the text. Moreover, never in the entire 40 excruciating minutes of the grand inquisition was one of the learners allowed to think.

   Actually, how can one think about anything when being peppered with dozens of disarticulated queries all in the name of teaching student skills they would need to pass the TEST? Admittedly during the torture there was mention of making predictions, making connections, and using background knowledge, but, regrettably, the students were never given opportunities to apply these strategies.

   So what is an administrator to do when confronted with instruction like this (which by the way is not uncommon in many schools)? For openers why not make certain that teachers do know how to teach reading as a thinking process-which it is. Educational Bridge offers staff development and teacher resource guides expressly aimed at supporting teachers as they transform their teaching from telling students how to think to modeling thinking processes the proficient reader uses to think through text. Take a look at Developing Readers, FastMapping, Stop To Think and the other Educational Bridge materials designed to help teachers become teachers who never work harder than their students.