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| September 1, 2006 Red Alert by Soren Wuerth Choose the best answer
Standardized testing is: A. racist and ethnocentric B. a disincentive to learning C. a meaningless exercise that costs lots of money D. destructive to young people’s future The woman from the state education department had come to show us “the data.” She stood in an auditorium, in front of nearly every teacher in the Ketchikan school district and, using short sentences in a halting speech, began a choppy PowerPoint presentation on standardized testing. The rotund woman, dressed in a black blouse and black sport jacket, called herself a “recovering” math and middle school teacher. No one laughed. Her presentation was delivered with the same air of condescension that the standardized tests are given, quizzing teachers on the meaning of acronyms and multiple-choice questions about Bush’s Every Child Left Behind act. Judging from comments and muffled heckling behind me, I was not the only teacher who felt the education department’s presentation (which I’ve seen once before) was demeaning. As I listened, I reflected on the story of Edwina. Edwina, tough, wore a sweatshirt, glasses, round Yu’pik face, and skirted drugs and alcohol in two communities rife with social problems like a running back moving past hapless opponents. Edwina was a senior last year and needed to pass the state’s High School Graduation Qualifying Exam to receive a diploma. Early in the year, I downloaded practice tests the state education department offered on its website. The sample test was three years old and students were so familiar with it they had many of the answers memorized. Edwina didn’t complain, however. She took the test seriously, as she did most of her school assignments. She would remain after class to finish projects, always smiling, falling into laughter as easily as water slips through fingers. She had family in Hooper Bay and Chevak and had to work hard to support them. Her anna (grandma) and atta (grandpa) along with the rest of her family relied on her to help prepare subsistence food, cook, wash laundry, run to the village store and hundreds of other tasks. She tried to stay awake in class and, when I joked with her once, she erupted in uncharacteristic anger, “I’ve been up all night working, babysitting, helping my anna and atta.” Worried about previous years’ lackluster test results, Edwina took classes designed to “teach to the test.” In my class, I gave up several weeks of classroom learning to review test strategies, test content and preparation. But in a village where reading has as low a priority as washing a four-wheeler, where kids are raised with a linguistically distinct form of English (village English), and where young people struggle daily with the effects of economic hardship, domestic violence and cultural disintegration, tests that asks students to compare PDAs are absurdly irrelevant. Edwina didn’t get a diploma when she graduated. None of her female classmates did. Edwina wrote a letter about her shattered view of education, how she worked to get A’s since kindergarten, how she wanted to achieve the diploma her older sister never received. I suggested she send it to the editor of the Bethel paper, but such publicity to a personal cause, to a problem like this, is not only likely to be interpreted as “sour grapes,” but it is not customary among the Yu’pik to elucidate private affairs. The department of education representative closed her presentation, saying, “Everyone’s goal is to increase student achievement.” Edwina accomplished that goal, but the state, and the school district, still failed her. Soren Wuerth is perhaps Alaska's best known community activist, and is the winner of the Alaska Press Club's 2006 'Best Columnist' award. He resides in an undisclosed location in rural Alaska and can be reached at soren@insurgent49.com. |
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