I spoke to a group of teachers in Los Angeles the other night, educators in LAUSD, and asked a very simple question: How many people in this room believe the bubble tests give an accurate portrayal of your professionalism? Not a person in the room raised their hand.

And the thing is, if you know teachers, you know that they will, for better or worse, tell it like it is. This is not Congress voting whether or not to give themselves a raise where you’ll get universal agreement because self-interest rules the roost. Teachers, if they believe in something, will say so… even if it hurts the feelings of other teachers in the room.

That’s because, IMHO, the kids, to most educators, are more important than the feelings of their peers.

But when nary a hand gets raised in a room that big and no one is willing to say, “You know what… I don’t love the bubble tests but at least I do think they are 1) well-written 2) on point 3) fair 4) reasonable in their scope and weight and 5) equitable so, while I have my small gripes, by-the-by I do think they reflect a truism about my own craft as a teacher and those that don’t well… I just think they are simply hiding something.”

I don’t know any teacher that believes this point of view. And I know scores who do not.

Are we hiding something? I mean the politicians have painted educators as if we have this dark, deep skeleton in the closet that we will, at all costs, defend from public view. Is that really the case? And then, by putting teachers in this role, they get to put on the cape and swoop in like a superhero to save the day for kids and parents.

ETS isn’t a multi-billion dollar “non-profit” corporation with their money-vaccuming tentacles poised to stretch into every American classroom at a greater pace than ever before; they are a white knight saving taxpayers from the rogues and scoundrels who are milking the government for entitlements and benefits while harming the needs of our kids.

Are teachers hiding something and do the bubble tests excavate our dark, dirty, deeply-closeted secrets?

I ask because year after year we are seeing our schools morph more and more into bubble test test prep factories… and is this not part of the sentiment driving that ship?

You knew it would come when these people would be exposed.

Their conversation really is unbelievable. The more you listen the funnier it becomes.

My first expose’… enjoy!

And in another case of the bubble tests being the tail that wags the entire educational dog, we see that one of the nation’s largest school districts – Los Angeles Unified – wants to start school earlier next year.

Not add more days of school, mind you. (Of course not. That would cost money and perhaps even add value to a child’s learning life.) Nope… they want to start earlier to “give students more time to prepare for the tests.”

That’s not a direct quote. Here’s the direct quote…

“The Los Angeles Unified School District hails the idea as a step forward academically, arguing that students would be better prepared for exams.”

It’s that blatant.
That direct.
That absurd.

Clearly, good widgets do well on good one-size-fits-all bubble tests and bad widgets do poorly on one-size-fits-all bubble tests so – just as clearly, we need to start concentrating on the bubble tests earlier next year as they are, after all, the entire raison d’etre for public education’s entire existence.

It also goes to show how little the time is valued by our schools after bubble test season is over. (I’ve blogged about this before, about how once testing season passes the entire school shifts into “bide-our-time til summer” mode because clearly, once the bubbles have passed, so has the need to “really teach”.)

Why don’t we just let the bubble test makers decide the school calendar and put this baby to rest once and for all? They could schedule our tests, they could schedule our pre-tests, they can schedule our practice tests, our warm-up tests, and our make-up tests.

And anything that’s left over, will just be a furlough day. After all, if we are not preparing kids for the tests, how in the world can it be said that we are really teaching.

Because if it’s not tested, why would we be teaching it anyway?

This will all save us time, money and energy. Since nothing else but the bubble tests matter, why are we even bothering to pretend that anything other than the bubble tests do matter.

Of course, once we parse the data, we’ll know who to keep, who to fire, which kid to shame and which kid to put on the cover of the school district’s newsletter.

It’s a simple solution really. I have no idea why it’s taken them so long to figure it out.

With Back-to-School season upon us, I ask myself, what is it that we should really want for all our nation’s students this year?

Less bullying?
Heightened meaningfulness in the classroom?
Better cafeteria food?

I think one core answer is growth. We want our student to elevate their aptitudes.

Kids will come into our nation’s rooms this year with certain skill sets. The goal to which we should all aspire is that they leave our classrooms at the end of the year with improved and heightened abilities.

Their growth ought to mean something. If there’s no growth, it’s troubling. If there’s supreme growth it brings smiles.

However, this is exactly why our current system of assessment is so ridiculously dysfunctional. We don’t reward growth. We aim for arbitrarily chosen targets.

For example, I have kids that have come to my room with 4th grade reading skills… and have left the year at an 8th grade level. And yet, when it comes to the 10th grade tests, they paint my kid’s performance that year as entirely inadequate and underachieving. 8th grade skills in 10th grade student mean we are a failing school and I am a failing teacher, regardless of how much improvement was demonstrated.

It’s hurtful to the kid, it’s demoralizing to the teacher and it’s detrimental to the school. (They act as if I had my feet up on the desk reading the newspaper all year. Sheesh!)

However, if we used growth model assessments, suddenly we’d see a lot more happy face emoticons being implanted in the emails the state department of education sends to our school district.

Instead, because of the means by which assessment is measured, we are ostracized.

Does a 14 month old who does not yet know how to walk get ripped by their parents because the “average” 14 month old can walk?

Does the 5 year old who does not yet know how to write their name get shamed publicly because the “average” 5 year can achieve this task?

Of course not. We reward growth towards these target objectives. And, most importantly, we continue to teach – through praise!!

We continue to inspire and encourage. It’s just common sense.

Yet, does anyone in this country right now think our current form of assessment is characterized by words like encouragement, praise or inspiration.

And are not those some of the most effective tools of terrific teachers?

Screw up the bubble tests and you will be humiliated, scolded, reprimanded and threatened. Pass the bubble tests with flying colors and you’ll get a few checkmarks… maybe an “attaboy” here and there.

Is it not time we started to measure growth?

Testing season is coming up — and if I am ETS (or another test-making company of like ilk) that means, it’s time to pop the bubbly.

Why? Because we are about to become a nation of bubble test takers and that means, cha-ching… cash is gonna be flowing into the coffers of the people who make these tests.

It’s like being a pumpkin salesman during the month of October — business is good.

But here’s a question. As far as I can tell, every corner of the world of education has seen the current budget crisis play a major role in their operations. At my school district, we RIF’d around 20% of the district’s teachers.

Across the state, we’ve reduced services to kids, cut out extra-curricular activities, started charging parents fees to allow their kids to play sports and so on.

But have the test takers reduced their prices for us?
Have the bubble test makers given us a break on cost?
Do we get a volume discount for literally lining up millions of customers annually?

My school is out of copy paper… but the bubble tests still cost the same price?
My school is out of toner cartridges… but the bubble tests still cost the same price?
Major school districts are literally shortening the school year whereby they will be providing less instructional hours to our most needy kids in order to make ends meet… but the bubble tests still cost the same price?

Pop the bubbly if you make bubbles… cause it’s boom time in a land where so many others are going bust.

It’s good work if you can get it, right?

I work hard at trying to provide learning opportunities that can be fun. For sure it’s a “special sauce” in my teaching methodology because I deeply believe that people try harder – and that there is more “stickiness” to education – when students are actually enjoying the work they are being asked to do.

Fact is, figuring out how to marry meaningfulness to rigor through “fun” is how I spend a lot of my prep time for lessons. Making school “enjoyable” is not a dirty word. (Though you wouldn’t know it if you look at the textbooks, the bubble sheet tests, or even the content standards. Sheesh, could they be more boring? Particularly the bubble tests. It’s like they overtly seek to disengage students as if triumphing over the dread of the content being tested is a academic skill for today’s kids.)

In my estimation, discounting the element of “enjoyability”, “meaningfulness” and “pleasure” is an Achille’s heel in ours school.

And rigor does not have to be sacrificed at the altar of student enjoyment. (Trust me, project-based learning where kids actually have to “create” something requires far more depth of knowledge and diversified skill sets than choosing A, B, C, or D 75 times in a row.)

But often it seems like we forget the perspective of the kids when we craft our lesson plans.

As a student, I want to sit in the room of a chemistry teacher who “blows something up” in order to bring a lesson to life.

As a student, I want to sit in the room of a history teacher who figures out a way for me to smell the stench of a blood-stained battlefield.

As a student, I want to be intrigued, challenged and engaged. I like surprises. I like experiences. I like it when I like what is going on around me.

And I don’t like it when I don’t. Life is interesting. School can be invigorating. The world is an amazingly complex, interesting and awe-inspiring place.

Don’t let it die on the classroom vine.

Engross your students. Gross out your students. But know that if you want to better reach your students, I say, don’t violate the law of basic kid-ness: they like to enjoy what they are doing.

After all, you catch more flies with honey, right?

As a teacher, I have always known that I just do not like high stakes bubble tests. However, I am not very articulate when it comes to defining the reasons why.

It’s like I know but I don’t know, ya know?

Well, read this. I have never seen the folly of the bubble tests exposed in a more lucid, “I can’t believe how ridiculous these things are” manner.

I’ll keep my own writing short today so you can read the link. Just incredible!!

How about a bubble test for politicians? I mean since they are so accurate and insightful — and can be used to determine so much authentic insight into actual professionalism — why not make the people who are making our students student up to the scntron have to step up to the scantron sheet themself?

I’ll go easy on the — it’ll be a simple T or F bubble test.

Choose A for True and B for False.

Number 2 pencils only please.

1. Did you fulfill all of your campaign promises in a timely, thorough manner?
T or F?

2. Did you balance the budget?
T or F?

3. Did you have sex with a goat in the bathroom of a travel stop along the highway at 2:00 a.m.?
T or F?

Please add questions to the list as you see fit. I figure a 100 question bubble test should give us just the data we need to determine the effectiveness of our elected leaders.

And we could also devise them for school superintendents, principals, and parents, too. Think of the accountability!!

ETS, watch out… I am gonna take down your empire!!!

I genuinely do believe in accountability.

I think this message of mine gets lost when I rip on the bubble tests as being the end-all, be-all of assessment in public education.

Yes, I do want elevated academic performance.
Yes, I do want high student achievement.
Yep, I am a big fan of improved classroom work.

However, I think the measures we use to gage accountability in education are flawed… and when flawed measures are used to evaluate my job performance, it makes me want to cry foul.

Of course, it’s inarguable that accountability is not good for the kids. (Poor of a sentence as that may be.) We really do need to know that teachers are doing their jobs. And unfortunately/tragically we all know that there is a segment of our teaching population that takes incredible advantage of “the system”. They are not doing their jobs and it hurts us all.

I loathe those teachers. Truly.

So how do my bosses know if I am teaching my kids if my kids can’t “achieve” on their assessments?
Take my word for it?
Trust me?

They aren’t buying that. And really, I am not so sure that they should… at least not hook, line and sinker.

Yet from my perspective as a teacher, if you are using a flawed means of assessment (i.e. narrowly constricted bubble tests) to evaluate me, you are not really being fair to me.

A classic Catch 22 thus confronts us. Use knowingly deficient accountability measures to enforce higher educational standards which result in collateral damage being done to the classrooms of teachers who are very much doing a solid job in their careers (as I feel is being done to me by literally mandating I “raise my scores or lose my job”) or allow the lemons to hide behind false fronts and continue to dodge professional bullets.

The screws of accountability are being turned right now and it hurts. As I said, I have no problem with people measuring my performance, assessing my professionalism, or holding me to a high — or higher — standard. Actually, I’d be honored if you did. Come on down to room 6213 at Lynwood High any time.

Yet, by having reduced the essence of the work I do to solely that of standardized test scores, I just don’t feel it paints an accurate picture.

All in all, I am now a teacher focused on test prep. This is what the “accountability monster” has created… irrationalism. You can’t push one thing without pulling something else.

As I have been talking about all week, we are faced with the very real threat of having our school district taken over by the state with lots of people terminated in the process. Test scores are the first box on the check sheet they will look at. You either have good ones or you don’t.

And so I must raise them or “go gently into that goodnight”. (BTW, that’s an allusion to a philosophical reference which will not be tested on the bubbles so whether or not my students ever grasp this “ideal of living” is, I guess, superfluous. English Language Arts is about properly identifying the gerund phrase in a sentence these days… or nothing at all.)

God bless ETS. I mean if you know anything about me, you know how much I find the whole industry of bubble tests to be 1) an absolute cash cow for the bubble test makers and 2) an unquestionably flawed means for either student or teacher assessment.

And now, ETS, is unveiling — from behind their magic black cloak of psychometrician darkness — the all new Personal Potential Index.

PPI bay-bee! You may not know it yet but one day it’ll be yet another acronym which joins your lexicon of educational alphabet soup.

Here’s some info on PPI.

In short, the PPI will be attached to the new GRE as an insight into a prospective applicant’s non-cognitive ability. (Stay with me here… this is worth it.)

As ETS says, the PPI is an index whereby “three or four professors or supervisors — generally those who will also be writing letters of recommendation — will answer a series of questions about candidates’ non-cognitive skills in various areas, as well as a more general set of questions. Applicants will be rated on a scale of 1-5 on questions about their abilities in these six areas: knowledge and creativity, communication skills, team work, resilience, planning and organization, and ethics and integrity.”

Let me repeat that. A student’s teachers will rate the kids “knowledge and creativity, communication skills, team work, resilience, planning and organization, and ethics and integrity.”

Now, being unsure of matters, I consulted the dictionary as to a definition of cognitive. Merriam Webster defines cognitive as “relating to, being, or involving conscious intellectual activity”

Uhm, excuse me… how are any of the “non-cognitive” skills “non-cognitive?”

Okay, forget I asked.

Uhm, excuse me… aren’t the quirky kids I am fond of “creative” and the quirky kids who annoy me “kids who demonstrate poor communication skills”?

Okay, forget I asked.

Uhm, excuse me… is this not an attempt to quantify unquantifiable things by people who might not really be best qualified to make these quantifications anyway?

Okay, forget I asked.

Uhm, excuse me… does this mean that sucking up is now mandatory instead of optional in order to advance in school?

Okay, I tease.

I guess on one hand I should tip my hat to ETS for finally acknowledging to their critics (like me) that their tests don’t give a full enough or broad enough or accurate enough picture of test takers even though they most certainly imply that their assessments do.

Because that’s really what this PPI thing is — a concession to that exact idea. I mean, by building this PPI thing-ey, they are tipping their cap to the idea that, “Ya know what… maybe their is more to a student than the ability to choose the correct bubble with a number 2 pencil in hand.”

Ya think?

The only thing I can for sure say as I watch this all unfold is that for a non-profit, ETS sure makes a lot of money.