In some ways, it’s an unbelievable irony. I spend the entire school year answering students’ questions, encouraging students to ask questions so I can answer them, begging students to ask questions. I sometimes have to teach students how to ask questions or even when.
“If you just blurt things out, you’re creating a problem instead of a solution,” I say. I know the kid has heard this a thousand times; I know, because I’ve told him at least 974 of those times. Still, I say it again: after all, it was a legitimate question. Wasn’t it?
Sometimes the questions stump me. Sometimes humorously: “Mr. S, why do they call a grapefruit a grapefruit? Why don’t they call grapes “grapefruit” and grapefruit “big citrus ball”? Sometimes seriously: “But why doesn’t that appositive have commas?” To the first type, I just laugh; to the second, I reply honestly: “I don’t really know. I’ll do some research and let you know tomorrow.”
But no matter the topic or the nature I (mostly) live for questions. They’re little signs of motivation, indications that the students are thinking, are trying.
And then today, after testing — the state-required SCPASS that measures my success as a teacher and my students’ success as students, or so they say — I get a question.
“Mr. S, what does X mean?”
It’s at the end of the day; I’m tired. Test violations and test rules are not even close to considerations; heck, I’m not even thinking about why the girl asked the question.
I answer her.
She asks another.
I catch on.
“These are from the test today, aren’t they?” I ask sweetly.
“Um…” she smiles.
“You know I can’t discuss this. I’ve told you guys a hundred times. We can’t talk about it. Period.”
“But why?” she insists.
Indeed.
The nature of standardized testing makes them completely useless as pedagogical devices. Assessment is meant to drive curriculum: you take the results of the test and decide where to go from there. Do I need to reteach? Did they catch it all? What topics give students the most trouble?
But these standardized tests are exceptions to that rule. I won’t know the results until next fall, when there’s nothing I can do with it except to use it to set my goal for improvement next year I can’t discuss it with students after they take it so that we can fill in the gaps the test exposed. It’s just an enormous time suck that seems to have no other purpose than bureaucratic harassment.
But I give the straight answer: “It’s just the rules.”
“That’s stupid.”
True. I guess in a way it was a test protocol violation. The real violation, though, came much earlier, in the design and implementation of these protocols.