Complaints about teaching to the test and narrowing the curriculum are nothing new, but a smart new blog called The Ed Skeptic has an interesting analysis on how test prep leads to a “bastardization of reading” in elementary schools–especially low-income schools. Teaching and practicing test taking strategies is ”a more efficient input towards the goal of maximizing testing performance” than rigorously teaching academic subjects. And that’s a problem.
Consider the test prep ritual, surely familiar to every elementary school teacher by now, of teaching children to read the questions and answer choices first, and then read passage itself, underlining key sections and phrases that offer clues to the answers. Notes blogger Jennifer Page:
This read-questions-and-answers-then-scan-text-strategically approach isn’t natural, but it works. Thing is, you can’t introduce this strategy to students the week before The Big Test, or only a few will use it. You might be able to guess where I’m going here. To achieve high performance on standardized tests, it is perfectly sensible for teachers to have students read 500-word passages instead of chapter books all year long, and to read them in a way that will get them in the habit of strategically attacking multiple choice questions.
“This is the bastardization of reading, folks,” she concludes, ”and it’s precisely the sort of classroom practice that is galvanized when school accountability is the end-all.” Indeed, Page correctly concludes that teachers who don’t maximize time spent on testing strategies are acting as “ irrational agents.”
It’s become to common to claim that testing hasn’t narrowed the curriculum (the problem is more accurately defined as an insistence on teaching reading as a content-neutral, all-purpose skill). But Page’s argument is broader, and more troubling: the focus on testing changes and subverts how children are taught to read. She proposes making it illegal for Race to the Top Funds to be spend on commercial test prep materials to send a signal that “replacing the language arts block with multiple-choice practice is unethical.” She also suggests we no longer test reading. No, really.
I am very deliberately attacking the substitution of mind-numbing 500-word passages for novels. For reasons that I don’t have room to discuss here, I’m much more optimistic that critical thinking in math can be measured by the multiple choice format and that testing math doesn’t lend itself to test score pollution in the same way that reading does. If every school in America administered the same rigorous math assessment for grades K-12, dataphiles at state education departments would have one incredibly useful measure of how well students are doing (by classroom, school, district, state, region, etc.). Creating such an assessment system, and eliminating the standardized test in reading, would promote the goal of meaningful accountability while delimiting that harm that strategic test preparation can do.
The view of people with classroom experience is too often marginalized in policy debates or mindlessly assumed to be echoing union positions, so mark The Ed Skeptic as a blog to watch. “Dysfunctional school culture was frequently undermining my best efforts in the classroom,” Page says in an email. She is a former Teach for America corps member and elementary school teacher, now a doctoral student in political theory at Harvard. “I began to think about how policy reform at the federal/state level could make a dramatic impact on educational outcomes.”
Speaking of the voice of experience, I’ve been inexcusably remiss in not heralding the arrival in the blogosphere of Walt Gardner, a 28-year veteran Los Angeles teacher, who has in recent years gained a reputation as the Isaac Asimov of letters to the editor, penning dozens of missives in every major print publication in the country. But wait! Wasn’t it Gardner who once said of education blogs, “I have an aversion to them because they too often become venues for rants rather than for reason…they seem to attract a disproportionate number of self-styled experts with dubious credentials who just want to ventilate.”
Yes, well, plus ça change. I’m glad he’s over his aversion, and that EdWeek has given a high-profile gig to a smart, independently-minded pro.
There is nothing wrong with teaching to the test unless the test is counter-productive to quality learning. Test prep for an AP exam can be exceptionally helpful in both learning the material and demonstrating mastery on the exams.
Our current reading tests are based upon a faulty assumption that reading is a skill, something that is codified by most standards documents. So the fact that teachers are responding by using commercial test-prep programs is only to be expected.
The problem is not the test-prep, it is not the teacher responding to the testing-accountability mantra, but the foundational assumption that reading can be assessed devoid of content.
Comment by Erin Johnson — March 18, 2010 @ 1:13 pm
I think Page describes a practice that goes well beyond teaching reading as a skill. It teaches TEST PREP as a skill, which undermines reading instruction. Her take on the issue is very interesting. I would be instructive to study the impact of test-taking strategies on how students read texts that aren’t tethered to multiple choice questions. I wonder if it would be possible to discern an effect on their reading practice.
Comment by Claus — March 18, 2010 @ 1:37 pm
“I am very deliberately attacking the substitution of mind-numbing 500-word passages for novels.”
—Once again, it seems impossible for too many in education even to consider the benefit to students of having them read complete nonfiction books (not just novels)…
Will Fitzhugh
http://www.tcr.org/blog
Comment by Will Fitzhugh — March 19, 2010 @ 10:13 am
Will,
There should be such a thing as history class and science class. In those classes, historical and scientific works should be read, and (at least in history) students should write substantial research essays.
English class should not tilt toward nonfiction. Yes, it should include some literary nonfiction. But the focus should be on literature. Otherwise literature will be squeezed into a corner. Students should not be reading novels alone; they should read epic and lyric poetry, comedy and tragedy, short stories, essays, speeches, and more.
If the schools are not treating science and history seriously, if students do no serious reading in those classes, that is a problem. But English class should not have to assume the burden.
I fully agree with you that students should read more nonfiction–just not at the expense of literature.
Claus,
I have seen students dutifully go through “pre-reading” steps before starting a new book: they examine the cover, the picture on the cover, the blurbs on the back, the table of contents, the back matter. They skim through the book and look at the pictures. They predict what the book will be about.
Granted, we usually do this at the bookstore; we look at the cover, skim the book, try to glean whether it is something we want to read. What concerns me is not the activity so much as the weight given to it–and that is a direct or indirect result of test prep. I have seen entire lessons devoted to “pre-reading,” and I have seen students dwell on the picture on the cover when beginning a novel or nonfiction book. They were suprised when I told them the author (in this particular case) had nothing to do with the picture, and that different editions had different pictures.
Comment by Diana Senechal — March 19, 2010 @ 10:41 am
Diana,
Could you make the case why English class should focus on literature and not the non-fictional texts necessary for being successful in history and science?
Also, in every class there are time limitations. What emphasis do you think should be on reading full length novels/dramas versus short passages that can be used to cover literary topics/terminology in less time?
Comment by Erin Johnson — March 19, 2010 @ 11:35 am
Erin,
What do you mean, literary topics and terminology? The terminology has no meaning except to illuminate the literature. Nor can we understand “literary topics” without reading the literature.
Literature plays with language and creates meanings through sounds and rhythms. You have to hear it, memorize it, and ponder it to grasp some of these meanings, and even then they reveal themselves slowly.
How could one even approximate an appreciation of Gerard Manley Hopkins’ “The Caged Skylark” through “topics and terminology”? Here’s the first stanza:
As a dare-gale skylark scanted in a dull cage
Man’s mounting spirit in his bone-house, mean house, dwells—
That bird beyond the remembering his free fells;
This in drudgery, day-labouring-out life’s age.
Sure, there may be the topic of mortality, the terminology of alliteration, but none of this comes close to the poem itself. And that’s just one stanza of one poem.
Also, literature can tell truths that nonfiction can’t, at least not in the same way. It can reveal secret human thoughts and motives. It can show the complexity of moral decisions. Its language can linger in the mind, it can come back to mind years later with new meanings.
Nonfiction must have its place, but so must literature. If English class does not focus on literature, which class will? Literature requires time, dedication, immersion. No, it is not a matter of “covering literary topics/terminology.” That may be sufficient for passing a test, but that is not the study of literature, or close.
Comment by Diana Senechal — March 19, 2010 @ 1:17 pm
Diana, If you look at the literature sections of ELA standards, they usually focus on the literary elements that need to be studied, without preference for the text or length of text.
If the literary elements (foreshadowing, personification, etc.) should not be the focus of a Literature class, what should be? And how would it be possible to specify that focus without specifiying which books should be covered?
Comment by Erin Johnson — March 19, 2010 @ 1:57 pm
Erin,
The literature curriculum should specify which works should be covered. Standards usually don’t specify works, but the standards are not and should not be curriculum.
Standards do tend to focus on skills and concepts. Some of that, as you well know, is for political reasons. Because skills and concepts are rather generic, people won’t object the way they might if the standards said everyone should read Chaucer in tenth grade.
But a good curriculum can address all the standards while focusing on actual works of literature. Should all students across the country read exactly the same works? No. Some variation should be possible. But if a curriculum does specify works, then it will make the skills and concepts that much more meaningful. Foreshadowing in itself is uninteresting. It can be done well or badly. Foreshadowing in Macbeth is fascinating, and it is only a fraction of what can be found in Macbeth.
Comment by Diana Senechal — March 19, 2010 @ 2:32 pm
Diana, Why would you think that students should not read the same works? If as, Don Hirsch has long championed, that students need common cultural literacy why wouldn’t that include specifying what works of literature that are studied?
Comment by Erin Johnson — March 19, 2010 @ 3:14 pm
Erin–Given how much literature there is to read, I see no problem with one school teaching the Odyssey and another the Iliad, if they don’t have time for both. Or one school might teach Macbeth and Hamlet, and another might teach King Lear and Othello. I think we could have a bit of the best of both worlds: a few required texts for all (very few, and of the highest caliber), a few required authors and time periods, and then some room for schools’ own choices. Certain teachers may have specialties and interests that shouldn’t go to waste. A teacher might be well versed in ancient Greek drama and capable of offering a course that few others could pull off in the same way.
Comment by Diana Senechal — March 19, 2010 @ 3:39 pm
My DD just finished taking the Iowa Test of Basic Skills in our homeschool. She tested for our own reference only so I gave her an above grade level test and went over the answers with her after she finished (obviously without allowing her to change what she had marked on the answer sheet).
She’s a very strong reader but she only did just okay on the reading comprehension test (71% correct vs. 90-100% correct on the other Language Arts sections). And it was precisely the kind of drawing inferences questions discussed in the blog post from “The Ed Skeptic” that she struggled with. She is still very literal-minded and hasn’t yet developed the ability to “read between the lines”.
We ran into this issue again today when she was doing a logic puzzle. The premise was that 4 kids were putting together a school yearbook and each did a different task with a different deadline. My DD didn’t realize that the deadline of Dec. 20th came before the deadline of Jan. 15th. The puzzle clues never explicitly said that the deadlines followed the school calendar but the designer assumed the individual solving the puzzle would know that. My DD got all frustrated because the clues didn’t make sense under her assumption of a chronological calendar.
Comment by Crimson Wife — March 19, 2010 @ 7:11 pm
As a hardcore bibliophile and suffering middle-school English teacher, I think Diana’s vision of a literature curriculum is quite practicable.
Comment by Miss Eyre — March 19, 2010 @ 7:17 pm
Diana,
So what constraints would you put on teachers in terms of what literature should be covered? Would you draw a hard line in the sand if they decided not to cover either the Odyssey or the Illiad and say substituted One Shot by Lee Child as an alternative heroic adventure, because the latter covers the same literary elements and is more relevant to contemporary culture?
Or should watching a movie version of the Odyssey become equal to reading a translation (as has happened in my daughter’s 9th grade lit class)? And given the immense variablity of translations, is there one translation that you would deem appropriate or not?
My point is that your ideal/perspective of what constitutes complete coverage of ancient Greek lit. is not the same as any other teacher. Is that okay? Is a superficial coverage of the Odyssey enough or do students need to delve deeper? Is reading an abridged version of the Odyssey (e.g. Mary Pope Osburne) the same as reading a direct translation?
It may feel respectful to allow teachers significant leeway in their own interpretation, but how much leeway would you really allow and still call it great coverage?
Comment by Erin Johnson — March 20, 2010 @ 1:16 am
Erin/Diana,
“Is reading an abridged version of the Odyssey (e.g. Mary Pope Osburne) the same as reading a direct translation?” While I suppose some exposure of these two epics is better than nothing, how about having have to translate the Iliad and the Odyssey from Latin to English? Wouldn’t that promote even greater understanding of these two classics? The subtleties and nuances gained from translating pieces like these would seem to be of more benefit than say, reading a Monarch Review of them, wouldn’t it?
Comment by Paul Hoss — March 20, 2010 @ 7:10 am
Erin,
No, watching a movie or reading an abridged/adapted version would not count. And yes, I would draw a hard line in the sand and say One Shot could not replace Homer.
Which translation? I’d have to look into it. Lattimore and Fitzgerald come to mind, but there may be others worth considering. It would be good to have students compare the translation with another version such as Chapman’s (and read Keats’ “On First Looking into Chapman’s Homer” while they’re at it). Also, it is very important for students to hear some of it in the original Greek (although we can only approximate the ancient pronunciation).
But I am not in a position to make these decisions anyway. This is all hypothetical. I want to find my way to a school that does teach literature in this way. But I would also fight for literature as a subject, so that there can be more schools of this kind. I think Miss Eyre would like a school along these lines too.
I have often heard derisive comments about teacher who want to teach literature, e.g.: “Many teachers have a fantasy that they will walk into a classroom and teach their favorite classics to sparkling-eyed students.” This is insulting. Why shouldn’t this be part of a teacher’s aspiration? The works will not always be the teachers’ favorites, but there is no shame and everything honorable about teaching literature. The eyes might not all sparkle all the time, but these works reach kids and make a big difference in their lives and intellects.
Many teachers would love to teach literature and would be thrilled with a curriculum like this. Also, such a curriculum would draw teachers into the field. One of the most discouraging aspects of teaching is the trivialization of subject matter. New teachers find out that they are supposed to teach a mashed-up version of the subject.
So why not pilot a curriculum along these lines and let it grow from there? Some schools have strong literature programs. Look at Brooklyn Latin and Stuyvesant. Why can’t there be more like these? Before worrying about a grand curriculum for all, why not get a few excellent examples going? There could even be a guild or association of schools that approached literature with a similar philosophy, even if their curricula were not identical. Schools that were inspired by this could join the guild.
Comment by Diana Senechal — March 20, 2010 @ 7:54 am
Paul,
Sure, students could translate Homer from Greek to English. But unless they were quite advanced, they would be struggling with the literal translation and not especially attuned to nuances. Students would need at least three years of Greek in order to tackle something like this. I believe this was common practice in some European gymnasia, but they certainly didn’t translate entire works of Homer, and I don’t know if they still do this.
And it would happen only in a few schools. You won’t find the country embracing the study of Greek. My former high school no longer offers Greek. When I was there, only a handful of students in the entire school took Greek (I was one). And this school was classically inclined, relatively speaking.
Yes, it would be great to have ancient languages in some schools. But it will only be that: some schools. It’s hard enough to keep modern languages in the curriculum (though apparently more and more schools are offering Chinese).
Comment by Diana Senechal — March 20, 2010 @ 8:09 am
Diana, in her post of 7:54 am above, says, “Before worrying about a grand curriculum for all, why not get a few excellent examples going?” I think there is an answer to that question, but it is not a good answer. The answer is that we are in a societal mood to prescribe for everyone. We are in a mood for standards. We are in a mood to focus on and debate details and principles for the masses, not to think about the maximizing the possibilities that individual teachers are faced with. We are in the mood to dismiss anything that cannot be scaled up for everyone. One might say we are in an “NCLB mood”. Is that good?
I have long argued for opportunism, and contrasted it with what we might call prescriptiveness. I’m not a great believer in standards. Standards, depending on one’s perspective, tell us what everyone has to do, or tell everyone what they should do, or at least provide a yardstick to measure everyone’s success or failure. An opportunistic perspective is concerned less with what should be, and more with what could be. Opportunism leads one to question the conventional yardstick.
I think it was just a few years back that the government, probably the department of agriculture, came out with a new version of the “food pyramid”. As I recall maybe it was not even a pyramid any more. What I remember is that it got a lot of hype in the press. It was supposed to do a lot of good. It would help people make wiser food choices. I thought it was pathetic. Millions of dollars were spent, I presume, to switch from one mediocre teaching device to another. Who cares? Well, the developers of this new food pyramid probably cared. I presume they would argue that it is worth spending millions of dollars on. If it were of benefit to only 1% of the general population then it still benefits millions of people. Maybe, but it’s nothing to get me excited. It’s a standard, sort of (in the yardstick way, not the requirement way). Who cares?
Erin, in her post of 1:16 am above, talks about requirements and constraints. She asks, “how much leeway would you really allow and still call it great coverage?” I don’t mean to be critical of Erin. She has insightful comments and I often agree with her. But in this case I think she is thinking in the mood of our times, thinking more of what should be and less of what could be. I think we should think a lot more about what could be, whether we can scale it up for the masses or not.
What makes a good teacher, and how should we evaluate teachers? These are not easy questions. One can walk into a classroom to observe with a checklist, or one can walk into a classroom to observe with a wide open mind. I think there is much more to be gained by the latter. I suppose there are realities that force administrators to observe with a checklist, but that has little appeal to me. I think we need a lot more observing with an open mind. What is this teacher doing? What is his or her rationale? And is it working? That’s thinking in terms of what could be, not what should be. That’s the opportunistic perspective. That, I believe, is one thing that will yield educational improvement in the long run.
I often compare teaching to parenting. Do we need national standards for parenting? Would it be good for the federal government to make a “parenting pyramid” like the food pyramid, or a checklist, or something like that? Is this analogy apt? Should there be an NCLB law for parenting. I don’t think so. The analogy may not be perfect, but I think it is often helpful.
Comment by Brian Rude — March 20, 2010 @ 1:29 pm
“It’s become to common to claim that testing hasn’t narrowed the curriculum.” I think that the writer of this piece needs to edit his work before publishing it. Teachers are already being disparaged for not being the cream of the academic crop, so mistakes such as confusing “to” for “too” do not help the cause
Comment by coup 1 — March 20, 2010 @ 1:44 pm
Brian,
“Do we need national standards for parenting?” I believe that we do, especially for our neediest cohorts. I also believe we need more than national standards – we need national parenting classes/training for some in our midst. Single mothers, teenage mothers, mothers/parents on any form of public assistance, etc., could all benefit from well thought out standards of what to do or not to do when raising a child. This should not be punitive in any form but offer specific guidelines for reading and talking regularly to infants/toddlers, avoiding corporal punishment, keeping appropriate toys and reading material in the home, establishing and maintaining a structured, nurturing home environment conducive to appropriately preparing the child for life and school. Such a program could be operated and sanctioned by the hospital where the child was born and could begin with quality pre-natal care for the mother and her baby.
This could be construed as targeted and/or discriminatory by some. Beyond that narrow perspective, and more importantly, it could prove to be quite helpful to many of these young mothers/parents, often found to be very unprepared for the most important job on our planet – that of being a parent.
The question should not be; do we need these standards but; why are these standards not already up and running?
Comment by Paul Hoss — March 21, 2010 @ 7:24 am
I instinctively sympathize with this post, but then I remember my own elementary years (early 1980s), and while testing wasn’t an issue at all, we certainly weren’t reading Shakespeare or Dickens . . . more like endless diagramming of sentences. Seems that today’s 5th graders might be a lot better off if they’re reading paragraphs.
Comment by Stuart Buck — March 21, 2010 @ 4:46 pm
Very often in blogs I get the impression that there is no commonly agreed on definition of what is being discussed. It seems to me that everyone has his or her own idea of what standards are, for example. And it seems also that there is little comprehension of just what literature is and why it is valuable. Remember what John Dewey said in his Pedagogic Creed:
“I believe that…literature is the reflex expression and interpretation of social experience; that hence it must follow upon and not precede such experience. […]”
I much prefer Diana’s description:
“Literature plays with language and creates meanings through sounds and rhythms. You have to hear it, memorize it, and ponder it to grasp some of these meanings, and even then they reveal themselves slowly.?…
?Also, literature can tell truths that nonfiction can’t, at least not in the same way. It can reveal secret human thoughts and motives. It can show the complexity of moral decisions. Its language can linger in the mind, it can come back to mind years later with new meanings.”?
Whoever knows how to read literature will know how to understand why someone would put these two quotes side by side.
Comment by Susan Toth — March 21, 2010 @ 5:19 pm
In my preceding remarks I put a few questions marks where there should be quotation marks. Apologies.
Comment by Susan Toth — March 21, 2010 @ 5:21 pm