Excellent Denver Post Opinion Column

[Bob Schaeffer <bobschaeffer@earthlink.net>]

         DINOSAURS EXTINCT -- AGAIN
           Denver Post -- March 12, 2004
        Guest Commentary by Angela Engel

It's that time of year again, when half a million public school children 
sharpen their No. 2 pencils and begin shading in dark circles on the 
Colorado State Assessment Program test, or CSAP. Under the guise of 
accountability, policymakers have made test scores the complete 
indicator of what children will learn in Colorado.

Instead of questioning that reasoning or examining the research around 
standardized tests, the public has blindly followed. Test scores have 
become the Holy Grail in education. By the time Colorado students 
graduate from high school, they will have spent, on average, a full 52 
weeks being tested. The National Center for Fair and Open Testing 
reports that students will take 36 to 60 standardized tests during their 
K-12 careers.

I wonder what kind of readers our children will be when they graduate, 
having taken dozens of tests instead of having read dozens of novels. 
What kind of writers will our schools generate when students have spent 
all of their time answering short-answer questions instead of 
articulating their ideas? I want more from my child's education than 
"proficient" test scores. Our children require more than a factory 
approach to schooling.

A Colorado school district recently determined that dinosaurs would no 
longer be part of the first-grade curriculum. What could possibly be 
wrong with 6-year-olds learning about Tyrannosaurus Rex, you ask? Isn't 
the excitement of dinosaurs the reason we didn't drop out in the first 
grade? Jefferson County schools and the majority of districts throughout 
Colorado are implementing a new curriculum modeled after the CSAP - 
which also is used to rate schools - and pushing out things like dinosaurs.

Legislators and school administrators everywhere are transforming 
classrooms into test-preparation facilities. Neighborhood schools 
throughout Colorado are replacing novels and books in their literacy 
curriculum with McGraw- Hill workbooks (i.e., test preparation guides). 
McGraw-Hill provides standardized tests and "educational resources" 
designed to improve test scores for 6,500 school districts across the 
nation. The company reported profits last year of more than $1 billion 
and projects a $2.7 billion testing market by 2007.

Supporters argue that the CSAP tests students on important skills. Fifty 
short-answer, computer- scored multiple-choice questions cannot 
accurately reflect a year's worth of learning. Yet districts are 
shrinking the curriculum, selecting resources that look like test forms, 
and eliminating subjects that are not tested on the CSAP. The No. 1 goal 
of schools throughout Colorado is to improve standardized test scores. 
My daughter's entire education will be focused on this one measure, and 
yet following graduation she will never see another CSAP test again. We 
must do better.

Policymakers implemented statewide testing as an attempt to hold 
educators accountable. The result has been a reorientation from teaching 
our children to testing our children. Our schools are in danger of 
becoming impersonal, inflexible and trivial.

The first time I wanted to become a scientist was in the sandbox during 
an palentological dig for dinosaur fossils (which I later discovered 
were chicken bones). My kindergartner will not find this same joy next 
year when she enters the first grade. She will miss the lessons on 
herbivores, carnivores and omnivores. Her instruction will not include 
ecosystems or the food chain. She will not come running home with 
questions about volcanoes or giant meteors. Shoeboxes filled with dirt 
mounds, dead plants and plastic dinosaurs will be replaced with 
worksheets crammed into notebooks.

Instead of discovering the joy of dinosaurs and all of the possibilities 
they have contributed to our scientific understanding, my first- grader 
will get to discover short- answer test questions and tiny shaded bubbles.

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University of Denver graduate Angela Engel has taught elementary and 
high school students in both inner-city and suburban schools for a 
decade. She has worked as a teacher mentor, staff development trainer, 
and parent trainer. She also founded a mentoring and tutoring program 
for inner-city children in the Denver area.