Al Shanker on High Stakes Testing

I’m currently working my way through It’s Being Done, the new book from Karin Chenoweth that profiles schools from around the country that are succeeding at the goal of getting all their kids to meet high standards. It’s a pretty good read; you can find it at Amazon or the Harvard Education Press, and there’s an article written by Ms. Chenoweth in a recent Education Week.

At the beginning of chapter 2 she has a recollection of a speech by Al Shanker, the famed AFT president, that really struck a chord with me.

Many years ago I heard Albert Shanker, then president of the American Federation of Teachers, talk about the effect a standards-based test has on the relationship between students and teachers. Teachers with high standards, Shanker said, were often seen by students as enemies imposing arbitrary standards that were often indecipherable—particularly if students had had teachers with lower standards in previous years.

But, Shanker said, the effect of an external exam, such as the national exams taken by students in many countries, is to produce a partnership between the teachers and the students, where teachers are the resources students need in order to master a difficult objective. In preparing for an external exam, students see teachers with high standards not as cruel and arbitrary taskmasters but as people who can really help them—something like hard-driving coaches who help their players win in a big game.

I’m not sure how many kids actually make that next step and attribute the pressures of the school to the testing instead of their teacher, but it’s still a neat way to think about things.

Do you talk with your classes about the state mandated tests? If so, what’s the conversation like?