I got an e-mail from my kids’ elementary school recently about the upcoming PARCC and CMAS tests. And given that I’m in the alleged opt-out haven of Douglas County, I winced and clicked, bracing myself for a deluge of ALL CAPS and exclamation points blaring at me about the scourge of standardized testing.
But to my shock and delight, the e-mail was kind of breezy — completely hysteria- and histrionics-free. Better yet, it was really helpful information. It included a link to the testing schedule, showing parents precisely how much time our kids would be spending on the state’s standardized tests.
And given the prevailing testing-as-torture narrative in these parts, I needed to do the math. I have a fourth-grader, the worst for testing time. He will take all four state tests: PARCC for math and reading, CMAS for social studies and science. Those tests are spread out over the next three months — and they add up to a grand total of 16.5 hours of testing for the entire school year.
In Douglas County, our school year is 172 days long. If you figure kids spend about six hours of day in class, that’s 1,032 total annual hours of instructional time. So 16.5 hours is 1.6 percent of their time in class taking a state standardized test — or less than two days out of every 100. Again, that’s the worst case. Grades three and six only take reading and math (a total of about 12 hours).
That’s not the impression you get about how much time kids spend on these tests. People talk about PARCC/CMAS like they are ceaseless ordeals that add to an already heavy burden.
I see it differently. The math shows that the tests take up a moderate amount of time, spread out over a number of days and weeks. And PARCC isn’t an added test. It’s a replacement test.
It’s a much better replacement, at that. (The e-mail from our school also provided helpful links to sample PARCC questions.)
The lousy, low-bar bubble sheets are gone. Now, standardized-test time is time much better spent: analytical thinking and problem-solving over regurgitating and bubble-coloring/guessing.
So “teaching to the test” no longer means wasted classroom time on bubble strategy instead of actual learning. Now, “teaching to the test” means teaching kids how to reason, problem- solve, analyze, build an argument, apply learning. I can’t think of a much better use of classroom time.
Yes, there are probably some local tests that are a waste and could get cut. But there’s not a lot to cut here. And we do need objective, state tests as one way to tell us how our kids are doing, how our schools are doing, and how well our school districts are exercising the considerable amount of local control they have in spending billions of non-local (state and federal) tax dollars. That classroom data should be factored in along with other measures, such as parent satisfaction, discipline rates, and quantity/quality of enrichment programs.
As the father of four Douglas County students — all of whom will be in the testing grades next year — and as an education-reform advocate, I’m a big believer in the importance of accountability and annual standardized testing. I want them to be hard tests. I want a clear, objective picture of how my kids are doing — measured against a high bar and able to be compared to how other students across the state and the country are doing.
Given how much harder these tests are and how much the bar has been raised, I know it may not be a pretty picture. But I’ll take the cold, hard truth over the snow job any day.
Michael Vaughn is director of communications for the Education Post (educationpost.org).
To send a letter to the editor about this article, submit online or check out our guidelines for how to submit by e-mail or mail.
