Making the best of testing

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Testing season is upon us again. Virtually everyone involved in K-12 education throughout North Carolina is focused on helping students pass end-of-grade/end-of-course tests (EOGs) and the state writing tests. At the same time, many educators are worried that teaching to the test will deprive their students of vital skills and knowledge they’ll need later in life. How can you maintain a balance between the need for a broad curriculum and the demands of specific, measurable assessments?

To search for answers, we went out in the field to find teachers who successfully shepherd their students through the state tests without turning their classes over to endless drilling and test items. Beth Hopkins and Shanora Kingsberry team-teach seventh graders at Ligon Middle School in Raleigh. Hopkins teaches math and science; Kingsberry teaches English and social studies. Both have seen consistent improvement from their students on EOGs over the past few years, and we asked them how they did it.

First, they told us, you have to plan ahead. And second, you don’t have to teach the test. In fact, most of the time, you’re better off if you don’t. If you relax and focus on what your students need to know for later grades and real life, they’ll be fine.

More specifically, what they told us boils down to four basic ideas. Tailor your teaching to your students’ needs. Integrate tested concepts into your curriculum. Focus on learning first, test-taking later. And do whatever you can to limit your students’ stress.

Tailor your teaching to your students’ needs.

At the beginning of each school year, Kinsgberry and Hopkins give their students a diagnostic test. This allows them to see where their students stand in regard to the concepts they’ll need to know for the EOG. Hopkins’ math students are nearly always weak on basic skills, even when they’re taking pre-algebra. "Not until this past week late March have we used calculators," she told us, "because they’re so weak with basic multiplication and long division" — the skills that will be tested on the EOG. The diagnostic lets her know which skills she needs to spend more time reviewing during the year.

Kingsberry has more flexibility to change her English curriculum based on the results of the diagnostic. "Every year, depending on what their weak or strong points are, I focus on something different," she says. "I’ll select different things for the whole team to read." For example, if they don’t understand inferences — that is, if they have trouble picking up subtle signals from the author, which they usually do — she’ll find a story that is full of allusions, such as "Utzel and His Daughter, Poverty." If they already understand inferences, she might not have them read that story at all; if they cover it and still don’t get the point, she’ll find something else. "It’s a matter of being able to find it yourself and pull things together, because there’s not any one place that you can go — a binder on stuff that has inferences. That’s what I spend most of my time doing."

Integrate tested concepts into your curriculum.

That seems obvious, but for Hopkins, it can be harder than it sounds, because she’s teaching students in math courses a year ahead of what the state considers to be grade level. "We’re doing pre-algebra," she says, "but they’re not going to be tested on pre-algebra by the state, so we have to keep going back and forth. Some of what’s included in pre-algebra is on the test, but some of the basic skills aren’t — skills that if you don’t use them you forget, like how to change fractions to percent or how to multiply fractions. They forget the simple things." In eighth grade, similarly, students might be learning algebra but be tested on pre-algebra. "Hopefully," she says, "if the kids are taking pre-algebra in seventh grade, their basic skills are pretty good," but that isn’t always the case. If parents want their kids to take calculus their senior year of high school, they have to get them into pre-algebra in seventh grade. The Standard Course of Study focuses on fundamentals, but there is a great deal of pressure to push kids up the ladder of math courses as early as possible. Hopkins works reviews of basic skills into her pre-algebra curriculum so the students will learn what they need for next year’s algebra course and still have a good grasp of the basic skills covered by the EOG.

Focus on learning first, test-taking later.

Kingsberry is mentoring a teacher this year who is new to the state. "I told her not to focus on the test," she says, "to teach what they needed to know to graduate from high school and be successful in college." Nowhere is this more true than on the state writing tests.

For Kingsberry, this strategy developed by accident. "I was certified to teach high school, and my first year teaching I taught seventh grade — and no one mentioned to me that there was a writing test in seventh grade. I didn’t know until January. The writing test was in March." She had only two months to prepare her students for the test, but because she had already laid the groundwork with strong writing skills, they had no trouble on the writing test.

Now, she recognizes that this was the best approach all along. Teaching to the seventh grade writing test, by itself, wouldn’t give students the skills they need to be successful in high school. "Being certified to teach high school," she says, "I know that if they write like that, like they do on the test, they’re going to be in trouble. If this is how I teach them to write, they’re not going to be successful in the future. So I don’t." The problem, she thinks, is that the people who grade the test aren’t English teachers. Although there isn’t supposed to be a formula for writing on the writing tests, the graders need guidelines, and so they look for specific things — "an introduction, three reasons, and a conclusion," the standard five-paragraph essay. "Too much creativity, I think, does not benefit their grade. So I have had students who were terrific writers not pass the writing test, because they didn’t write the way they needed to write to pass the test."

Instead, Kingsberry simply teaches her students to write, the way she knows will make them good writers for high school and beyond. "We do two essays a week starting the third week of school. I ask them a question and they write. They write and they write." Over time, they get used to writing and to the writing process, so that by the time they start thinking about the writing test, "they can pop out two pages, no problem." In January, she tells them what the graders will be looking for. The students go back over all the papers they’ve written during the year, and they discuss how they can make their earlier writing fit the model of the writing test.

"They already know how to write," she explains. "They can write an essay when they get to high school and not worry about whether it has the four or five things that they’re looking for on the writing test. But when it’s time for the writing test, they say, ‘Ok, this is what they’re looking for, let me give them that.’ And they know that’s what they’re doing — and they know that’s not the way to write."

In fact, DPI doesn’t claim that the writing tests cover everything students need to know to be good writers in real life. "In order to write well," their guide for students insists, "you must write consistently through the school year." But the writing test, as Kingsberry says, "can be overwhelming," and it’s easy to get caught up in making sure students have the specific skills they need to pass it instead of helping them become good overall writers.

Limit stress.

Avoiding a year-long focus on the test is a good start, Kingsberry and Hopkins say, although they can only do so much to keep kids’ minds off the EOG. "They’ve been going over the new standards with the kids," Kingsberry says, " and they know from the beginning of the year that ‘if I don’t pass this, that’s it, I’m in seventh grade again.’ And if you can imagine starting the year in August, knowing that if you don’t pass a test in May, you’re back in seventh grade again the next August — it’s high stress."

To make matters worse, most of their students are convinced they’re going to fail. On this year’s writing test, says Kingsberry, "I don’t have a single student who told me they thought they did well.… I have students who I know are going to do well on the EOG who are coming to the after-school review, because they’re stressed out that if they don’t come, they’re going to fail. And they’re not, I know they’re not — but they don’t believe me."

To keep their anxiety down, she schedules fun things for the weeks leading up to the test. This year they will hold an open-mike "coffee house" poetry reading, with parents attending, just before the EOG. This is actually a bit of a trick, Kingsberry admits: "I save figurative language" — the kind of language poetry relies on — "for last, because that’s really big on the test — but they don’t realize that, I never tell them."

In general, though, students should know what they need to know before May, and drilling on EOG skills at that point would be counterproductive. "They’re not going to be able to concentrate on anything we’re doing in class anyway." Two years ago, Ligon students went to Carowinds the Friday before the EOG and applied the math and science they’d learned to the roller coasters. This year, they’re holding a food festival where everyone brings in a favorite dish.

On the day of the test, Hopkins and Kingsberry do what they can to create a comfortable atmosphere for the students. Of course, not everything is under their control. "When we took the practice EOGs this winter," Kingsberry recalls, "we had no heat. If the air conditioning’s not on, the kids are loopy. If something’s going wrong in the classroom, they’re completely out of it. They can’t concentrate."

They used to let their students chew gum, eat snacks, and have drinks while they took the EOGs — "anything that will give them a break from the stress of taking the test, even if it’s just sucking on a lollypop," Kingsberry says. Hopkins concurs. "It helps them concentrate." But they have been told that food and drinks are no longer allowed, and so they look for other strategies. The school provides biscuits, juice, and milk in homeroom the morning before the EOGs, and Kingsberry brings doughnuts. "Most of the kids don’t eat breakfast.… At least it keeps them from being hungry while they’re taking the test."

Wait for the results.

Kingsberry and Hopkins have had consistently good results on the EOGs with kids who are in the middle of the pack academically. "I got a little uptight about it at the end of my first year," Kingsbury admits, "because I didn’t know how they calculated it.… But I have a consistently high growth level. That’s something I tell the kids, too — it makes them think Ms. Kingsberry knows what she’s doing!" It also helps them to know that their teacher is responsible for their learning, too — that their success or failure isn’t all on their own shoulders. If education really is a team effort, students can relax about the tests — and focus on learning.