“Matter” is not just a politically expedient term in the 2020s, it is a highly functional term. “Matter”, as a verb, implies an essential importance or value. When the word is used properly, it denotes a prioritization of what matters over what does not matter. We need to set this aright. Try this out – education matters, annual assessments do not matter.
The blame game of school assessment and accountability is messy because we all in are in the soup of the problem of making something that does not matter matter. This includes all educators and educational leaders. I am writing of the obsession with annual assessments of student achievement of selected academic skills that kicked into high gear with No Child Left Behind and continues twenty-plus years later.
What Do We Know?
We march to the tune of federal and state mandates. Each provides us with requirements to assess annually all enrolled children regarding their proficiency in English/Language Arts (reading) and mathematics. Further, government publicly posts these assessment scores, along with graduation and promotion rates, and daily average attendance, as measures of school quality for the purpose of community accountability and parent choice of school enrollment.
A person who believes that this narrow and myopic perspective of school quality is what really matters is not concerned with education but with some other nefarious agenda.
Education, not incremental learning, cannot be measured on an annual basis. And, the education that we want for our children, one that is rich in academic, activities, arts, and athletics, cannot be measured and conveyed by the boiled down, single score that is used today to connote educational quality in a school or school district. On the latest State Report Card, our local school is represented with a 79.6 – Exceeds Expectations. The word “meaningless” is spoiled when used to describe this attribution of educational quality. 79.6 is not about education, it is about politicized ranking. Contradictions abound in our soup.
Schools in Wisconsin are prescribed by statute and DPI rule to provide each child with instruction in a long list of curricular and topical subjects. Statutory high school graduation requirements prescribe credits in math, science, ELA, social studies, physical education, health, and a successful civics examination. And, the “state superintendent encourages school boards to require an additional 8.5 credits selected from any combination of vocational education, foreign languages, fine arts, and other courses,” per WI Stats s. 118.33(1)(am). The legislature piles on with favored, special topics, such as personal finance, tribal history and sovereignty in Wisconsin, and calendared days for venerated Wisconsinites.
What, then, is a quality education? Certainly, the requirements of our state cannot be ascertained on a two-subject annual assessment. It is folly and absurd to connect and label a school’s quality using this politically-devised scoring mechanism.
Rather, take the long view. As a result of multi-subject instruction and school experiences, what does a child know, what can a child, how does a child resolve significant problems, how does a child cooperate and collaborate with others, and what does a child value from their learning at the point of graduation? Or, at the transition from one level of education to the next – elementary to middle school to high school, or primary to intermediate to secondary levels of education.
Why Is This Thus?
Education, like soup, is not something you throw in a pot, turn on to heat, wait ten minutes, and eat as as a consummate meal. Education requires time for elements of various curricular ingredients to mingle, for initial trial and error, for correction, for additional instruction to refine understandings and skills, for enrichment and extended applications, and for personal acknowledgement of what has been learned. Children do not become proficient readers, trumpet players, computer coders, throwers of ceramic pots, or solvers of physics problems in single year increments. Or, in two- or three-year increments. Education of important learning takes time.
It is school fact that some children can meet a school goal immediately and other children require significantly more time. Some children seem to learn innately while others learn by grinding through their assignments. At the end of the day, educational quality is when all children have learned and are proficient in displaying their learning. Current assessment systems reward schools based upon the enrollment and achievement of their innate learners.
The quality of an education is dependent upon each child’s wants and needs. When the school bus arrives in the morning, some children run to the gym or playground drawn by sports and athletics, some run to the music rooms and art studios drawn by artistic interests, others run to their classrooms drawn by individual academic interests, some to the school shops, and still others to hallways and school commons where their social interests are met. We can find children who excel in the arts yet stumble on the required ELA and math assessments and today we label them as “not meeting expectations”. We find children whose first language is not English making tremendous gains in English-dominant academic classes yet disaggregate their low assessment scores. We should be celebrating each child’s personal growth and attainment of our many curricular goals as displays of educational quality.
Our current valuation of educational quality creates divisive strata within our faculty. Teachers of ELA and math matter because their curricula are measured. Teachers of all subjects not measured do not matter, or not as much. Further, we insult non-ELA and non-math teachers by insisting they find and use strategies that fortify student ELA and math growth. Then, we give lip service when asking ELA and math teachers to support student learning in what doesn’t “matter”.
To Do!
As the saying goes, “Say what you mean and mean what you say”. If in your school only annual ELA and math proficiencies matter, say this on your web site and above the entrance doors of your school. And, post your annual state-issued school report card scores as if Moses carried them down a nearby hill. If test scores matter, refer to your excellence as snapshots only.
If, in your school, education matters, take the long view. On your web site and above your doors declare the importance of all instruction and student learning over time. Post scores of multi-year growth toward proficiency in academics, activities, arts, and athletics. If education matters, place your emphasis on learning over time that matters, refer to your excellence as enduring education.