TESTED: ONE AMERICAN SCHOOL STRUGGLES TO MAKE THE GRADE

[Peter Farruggio <pfarr@cal.berkeley.edu>]

> TESTED: ONE AMERICAN SCHOOL STRUGGLES TO MAKE THE GRADE
> "NO CHILD LEFT BEHIND" SHOULD REALLY BE CALLED "NO TEST LEFT BEHIND:
> Los Angeles Times Book Review -- July 29, 2007
> by Edward Humes
> http://www.latimes.com/features/printedition/books/la-bk-humes29jul29115721,1,3264275.story
>
> Pop quiz: You are the principal of an elementary school best known 
> for its poor kids and poorer grades when, unexpectedly, your 
> students' annual state assessment scores shoot through the roof, 
> making you the newest darling of the No Child Left Behind era. Do you:
>
> a) launch a school-wide celebration featuring a stirring rendition 
> of "Ain't No Stoppin' Us Now"?
>
> b) immediately start drilling students for next year's tests?
>
> c) panic at the likelihood that the next round of scores will 
> plummet, turning you into a No Child Left Behind pariah?
>
> If you're stumped, don't worry. I left out d) all of the above, 
> which is the real answer at the real school chosen by journalist 
> Linda Perlstein as the setting for her new book, "Tested: One 
> American School Struggles to Make the Grade." Her observations only 
> confirm many of our worst fears about the direction U.S. education 
> has taken under a federal edict that would have been more aptly 
> named "No Test Left Behind."
>
> The conceit of Perlstein's book is simple: to reveal up close the 
> effects on one elementary school, and, by extension, all public 
> schools, of the testing and accountability culture mandated by the 
> 2001 No Child Left Behind Act, President Bush's signature education initiative.
>
> Statistical studies of this law abound, but an examination of its 
> human effects is long overdue. "Tested" succeeds in filling this 
> void on several levels, providing descriptions that, for many 
> readers, will seem a stunning indictment of No Child Left Behind and 
> the state and local policies it has engendered. The endless regimen 
> of testing, drilling, report filing, student bribing and student 
> berating that Perlstein describes could only have been conceived by 
> politicians and ideologues who rarely set foot in actual public 
> schools (and would never subject their own children to the 
> Frankenstein classrooms their policies have created).
>
> Perlstein chose Tyler Heights Elementary School in suburban 
> Annapolis, Md., a campus of mostly poor and minority students 
> surrounded by schools with far more affluent and academically 
> prepared student bodies. But unlike troubled inner-city schools, 
> suburban Tyler has considerable financial resources at its disposal 
> with which to close the "achievement gap."
>
> She begins with the announcement in May 2005 that, after years of 
> poor scoring, Tyler Heights has dramatically improved its 
> performance on the Maryland School Assessment, the annual testing 
> mandated by No Child Left Behind. These questions set up the drama 
> of the following school year depicted in "Tested": Was this a fluke, 
> and Tyler a one-hit wonder? Or did the scripted lessons and ruthless 
> teaching-to-the-test payoff, a worthy model for other schools? Or 
> had the state lowered the bar so far on its tests that even failing 
> students appeared to shine? Finally, there is the question that most 
> haunts Tyler's principal and teachers throughout the book: Can we do it again?
>
> In charting the answers to those questions, Perlstein depicts a 
> school obsessed not so much with educating as with measuring 
> education, and with doling out a kind of pallid simulation of 
> knowledge. Stories, for example, are always analyzed for their 
> structure, almost never for their actual content. Creative writing 
> is discouraged in favor of repetitive paragraphs called "Brief 
> Constructed Responses," or BCRs -- an acronym Tyler kids hear endlessly.
>
> "They're learning to do the formula," one teacher laments midway 
> through the school year, "and forgetting how to think."
>
> The goal, Perlstein shows, is to limit teaching to ideas, skills and 
> knowledge that can fit inside the confines of a multiple choice 
> test. Teachers must follow a strictly paced and worded script that 
> even mandates what classroom posters can be hung. Students are 
> similarly regimented: Creativity and spontaneity only get in the way 
> of data collection. And so the author treats us to the awful moment 
> when bright kindergartners identifying long vowel sounds are told to 
> stop -- because rigid lesson plans say they are supposed to know 
> only short vowel sounds.
>
> Reading and math are paramount in Maryland's annual exams, so the 
> constant test prep for those two subjects makes science, social 
> studies and art vanish, leaving third-graders unable to identify the 
> president or say whether Annapolis is a city or state. The school 
> lavishes attention on troubled and unruly children, while the most 
> gifted and cooperative are ignored, one of No Child Left Behind's 
> most destructive unintended consequences. "Tested" depicts a system 
> of constant rewards for poorly behaved students whose scores might 
> be raised, but nothing for the kids already doing the work and 
> passing or those who are so far behind they are deemed unlikely to 
> pass no matter what.
>
> Perlstein shows the human effect of these priorities. Kids who once 
> devoured chapter books write BCRs about hating reading (and 
> themselves). Tempers flare, teachers accuse kids of not wanting to 
> be smart. The principal constantly doles out prizes -- candy, ice 
> cream, field trips, massage sessions -- to students just for showing 
> up and doing what is required. The result of this bribery is 
> predictable: A third-grader balking at a lesson about using the 
> dictionary asks, "But what do we win?"
>
> Perlstein contrasts Tyler with a nearby school that has a mostly 
> white and affluent student population. Tyler gets more financial 
> resources, but the other school has advantages Tyler lacks: parental 
> involvement, stability at home and kids who've been read to since 
> infancy. At the neighboring school, the annual tests cause far less 
> consternation; science and social studies are still taught; teachers 
> are given more leeway to construct lessons suited to individual 
> classes (and to decorate their classrooms as they see fit); and 
> reading is perceived as an enjoyable activity rather than the 
> annoying precursor to a BCR.
>
> Thus the No Child Left Behind law, billed as a boon to 
> underperforming poor and minority students, is revealed as yet 
> another vehicle for disparate treatment -- and a way of blaming 
> public schools and teachers for factors often outside their control.
>
> Yet, despite it all, Tyler did pull off those amazing test scores, 
> which these days are the only measure of success that really counts.
>
> All of this and more is illustrated by Perlstein's trenchant 
> observations in "Tested." Unfortunately, this otherwise commendable 
> book fails to connect the dots, to make a case either for or against 
> the No Child Left Behind approach. Even the fundamental question at 
> the book's beginning -- whether the great tests scores were a fluke, 
> proof of educator excellence or evidence of a broken testing regime 
> -- is never answered.
>
> Perlstein, a former Washington Post education reporter and author of 
> an earlier book about middle school, "Not Much Just Chillin'," 
> cannot bring herself to pass judgment on much of what she observes. 
> Instead, "Tested" strikes a false journalistic balance between 
> unequal positions.
>
> A good example is her treatment of the No Child Left Behind law's 
> requirement that all U.S. students pass the annual tests by 2014, a 
> goal always regarded, even by supporters, as impossible to achieve. 
> No Child Left Behind, in effect, is designed to brand large numbers 
> of public schools as failures, opening them up to takeover, closure 
> or privatization. Yet Perlstein introduces this deadline without 
> comment, then praises President Bush's championing of it as an 
> attempt to "force real reform in every state" -- a statement belied 
> by almost everything she goes on to report from the classrooms at Tyler.
>
> A second shortcoming of the book is Perlstein's inattention to 
> storytelling and character development, making "Tested" much slower 
> and drier reading than it ought to be. The students at Tyler mostly 
> come across as interchangeable stick figures, their teachers not 
> much better drawn. Even the main character, Tyler's principal, seems a cipher.
>
> That said, "Tested" is on balance a worthwhile read for anyone 
> interested in the state of American public schools. Perlstein's 
> portrait is alternately heartbreaking and enraging as it offers up 
> important observations about the unintended and undesirable 
> consequences of our current testing obsession.
>
> Edward Humes is the author of nine nonfiction books, including 
> "Monkey Girl: Evolution, Education, Religion and the Battle for 
> America's Soul" and "School of Dreams: Making the Grade at a Top 
> American High School."