Testing Testing 123

Standardized testing is upon us. Upon my 7-year-old son Jonah this week, to be precise. Here's what he had to say:

"We have these very very important tests. They are very important. Very very important tests."

"They say, 'fill in the bubble under the correct answer' so you have to fill in the bubble."

"They are very important tests because the President of Testing wants to know how second-graders are doing."

"The President of Testing might even show them to Barack Obama!"

"The tests are very hard."

"At the bottom of the page it says 'Go On' and then you go on and then at the bottom of the next page it says 'Go On' and then you go on and at the bottom of the next page . . . and at the bottom of the next page it says 'Stop,' so you stop. Then it starts a new chapter. At the bottom of the page it says 'Go On' and then you go on . . . and then on the last page of the last chapter of the test book, page 99, it says stop, so you stop."

"The test book is very big."

"If you fool around on the test and answer something with the wrong answer even though you know the right answer, you have to go to the office. Because the tests are very very important."

So, I asked him how it made him feel to hear how very very important these tests are.

"Worried."

He's only a second-grader, and, President of Testing and President Obama's interests aside, I don't think these particular tests are even the biggies in terms of the State Report Card, No Child Left Behind, etc. Yet, the pressure is already huge.

The detrimental culture of testing goes even further than a week or so of pressuring small children like they're sitting for the LSAT. There's all those bland fill-in-the-bubble worksheets they do, starting in the earliest grades, to get them ready for tests later on. All the creative work they could be doing. And all the dumb movies they watch at school in the spring after the high-stakes tests are done and everyone gets to goof off because the very very important stuff is over.

Testing proponents maintain that testing helps, because it holds schools accountable for making sure every child succeeds. Unfortunately, every child does not succeed. Some states are already making tests easier and eliminating subjects, sometimes in order to address low scores or poor passage rates on graduation tests. What's wrong with this picture? Here in Ohio, budget cuts just eliminated writing and social studies tests for some elementary and middle school grades. So are the tests essential or not? Do they test something we value - or not? Are teachers going to stop teaching subjects that aren't tested - and what does that say about our educational values?

I'm no expert, but I strongly believe excellent teachers, sufficient resources, and creative curricula would do more for our kids than the barrage of tests they are now subject to. Do we want our kids to have a common base of knowledge? Ideally, perhaps, yes, although what the common base should be in a global society is another sticky question.

Our kids need to become literate (including mathematically and scientifically literate) citizens with well developed critical thinking skills and hopefully a dash of creativity. How do we get there? There's no easy solution. But bubble tests in a kiddie pressure cooker? I don't think so.

What do you think?

Say It Ain't So!

A new word has come into my home. "Ain't." Jonah picked it up at school, and now his little brother Mills is saying it too.

Growing up, I couldn't tell my parents about how "me and Melissa went to the store," without being interrupted with barely a syllable out - "Melissa and I went to the store," my mom or dad spoke over me grandly. Or else they'd ridicule: "Would you say, 'Me went to the store?'" Sometimes I would give up and refuse to tell the story. It drove me nuts, like they were more interested in correcting me than in hearing what I had to say.

Now I teach legal writing to law students, some of whom have never heard of subject-verb agreement. I can get a little nit-picky at times, I admit. But I know my students will lose the respect of some future clients (say, my parents) if their writing is incorrect.

I try not to be all over my own kids on grammar and usage. I mean, Jonah's only six, and Mills isn't yet four. I don't want to stifle them so that they don't talk to me anymore. Given my upbringing and occupation though, I can't always help myself. Still, it can be counterproductive. For example, now that Jonah knows I don't like "ain't," he uses it at every possible opportunity.

Lately, I've gotten used to my kids picking up language habits from their classmates in their racially and socio-economically diverse schools. A little Ebonics comes with the package, to be blunt about it. Parents whisper about this, but it's a pretty uncomfortable subject, fraught with race and class.

So I gently correct when Jonah pronounces "dead" as "deeyid" or when Mills tells me what another friend "brung" to school that day. It's a delicate balance - correcting their speech without judging their peers or the cultures they come from. I listened to Jonah exclaim "DANG!!!" for a couple straight days before I suggested that he might try to restrain himself.

The other day, when Jonah came home saying "ain't" I assumed it was more of the same. Wrong.

His teacher read a book to the class that day, entitled, "I Ain't Gonna Paint No More!" So in kindergarten, where the children learn new words each day from their teachers, one of those words apparently would be "ain't."

I have a problem with this.

I wonder if there is a problem with me having a problem with this.

Jonah has a wonderful teacher. This year, he learned to read, to add and subtract, and much more. His teacher is so wonderful that I haven't been able to bring myself to mention my displeasure with the whole "ain't" thing. (Plus, I feel like the hyper grammar parent.)

On the sly, I looked up the offending book on Amazon. Supposedly, it is some award-winning beloved delight. Only a couple of grammar grouches like myself gave it bad reviews.

It's not like these are fully literate young minds reading Mark Twain. They don't know what is proper English and what is not. Their teacher is the wise guru at the top of the hill. If she says "ain't," it must be ok. But it isn't.

I remember a day in elementary school when the teacher taught us that the word was "ask" not "ax" and other similar lessons. Some students honestly didn't know until that moment. It wasn't their fault - they'd just never been taught the difference between colloquial speech and formally correct English.

I would think that this kind of teaching would still be a priority today.
Maybe it is.

Maybe it ain't.