A Mother's Reflection on STAAR

Today is a day that will live in infamy--the day Imma finished third grade state assessments.  This is the first year that she has had to take the STAAR (State of Texas Assessment of Academic Readiness) test, but unfortunately, it won't be the last. From now on, every spring, for the rest of her academic career, she will be subjected to these brutal exams to see whether or not she has learned everything she was supposed to in her current grade. I have experienced them as a teacher for many years, but this is my first year to view the STAAR through the lens of parental concern--and let me tell you, the view from here ain't pretty.
I remember taking assessments when I was in elementary school--some of them high stakes, some of them not so much. I grew up in Missouri where we started out with the Iowa Test of Basic Skills. Piece of cake! Then, the state came up with something called the MMAT (don't ask me what that stood for) and it wasn't that hard either. In fact, when I became a teacher in Texas, fifteenish years ago, the state assessments here weren't so difficult. They got a little bit harder with the introduction of TAKS about five years into my career,, but when STAAR came around a few years back, things got more than a little ridiculous. Then, to top it off, the state pushed all of our Essential Knowledge and Skills in math down two grade-levels last year, and now my third grader is supposed to know how to solve equations with equivalent fractions, and my kindergartner is doing pre-algebra (part-part-whole.)

My girls after a long day of being scholarly

Now, I'm all for having high expectations, don't get me wrong. But there is a difference between setting the bar at a challenging level and putting it where no one can even see it. Let's be honest. If the students only need to get around 55% of the questions right in order to pass, and about 25% of them can't do that--that's too hard!  It's not like they have to get a 70% to pass any of these tests. Shouldn't a test be easy enough that about half of the kids should be getting at least a 70%?? I don't know what the passing rates are going to look like once everything is said and done this year, but right now, it's not looking pretty.
But I've sort of high jacked the post here, and I didn't mean to. This wasn't supposed to be about me or my views as a teacher. It was supposed to be about my daughter.  If you read my blog, you know that Imma has autism.  She receives lots of special education services because of her differences. She goes to inclusion for math, has resources for reading, sees an occupational therapist about once a week, sees a speech therapist a couple of times a week, and also sees a music therapist once every two weeks ish.  That's a lot of support. She was also diagnosed as dyslexic last year, though she doesn't receive services (don't get me started.) Despite all of this, the test she takes is the exact same test that the other children take with these differences:
"STAAR A will provide embedded supports designed to help students with disabilities access the content being assessed. These embedded supports include visual aids, graphic organizers, clarifications of construct-irrelevant terms, and text-to-speech functionality."  (This is from the Texas Education Agency website, and you can find out more here.)
  For the reading assessment, she has to read the stories on her own, and then the computer reads her the questions and answer choices.  Maybe that's fair--maybe it's not. All I really know is that it's hard.  Even for students who are not differently-abled, it's hard. We are asking eight-year-olds to analyze text, to infer, to make assumptions based on the text regarding the author's purpose and character's traits.  They need to know the differences between expository and personal narrative. They have to be able to choose between answer choices which are often very, very similar. Choose the best answer.  Not the right answer--the one the person who wrote the test, who may or may not have been a teacher at some point, who certainly doesn't remember what it's like to be eight--happens to like a little bit more than the other answers.  It's really, really hard! It's NOTHING like the tests we took--I took, anyway--when I was a child. And it's not fair! We are robbing our kids of so many things when we subject them to high stakes testing before many of them even feel completely stable on a two-wheel bike. Self-confidence.  Pride.  Resilience.  Trust.  Purpose.  Persistence.  All of these things are questioned and often go out the window when we look a baby in the face and say, "You didn't even get half. Not even half!"
Now, of course, that's not how we phrase it, but we may as well. After all, we've been teaching them all year how to analyze characters, so of course they can read us like a book--or at least like a passage.
And we are filling up our time with plenty of those, too. Passages and lots of them. Unit assessments. Curriculum based assessments.  TEKS checks.  Practice passages. Mock assessments. You name, it they've endured it.  We've taught them "strategies" and "games." We've talked about "best practices" and ways we can "make a good guess" when we are not sure.  We have replaced the joy of coming to school to learn because learning is fun with the nervous unstable existence revolving around the knowledge that eventually the STAAR will come. You cannot hide from it; at some point in your academic career, you will be judged. You will be weighed. And many of you will be told you're not good enough.
STAAR is supposed to measure a lot of things--academic readiness, intelligence, knowledge, reading skills, critical thinking skills, mathematical calculation skills.  Maybe it measures these things. Maybe it doesn't. I'll tell you for sure there are a whole lot of other things it does not measure.  It won't tell you that my child is amazing at building worlds in Minecraft. It won't tell you she can put a puzzle together without looking at the picture. It won't tell you that she's taught herself several songs on the piano. It won't tell you that she's a great big sister, that she helps around the house, that she takes care of her dog, especially during thunderstorms.
STAAR can't tell us how kind, how loving, how considerate, how friendly a child is. It can't tell you how good of a person she is or how hard he tries. It really can't even tell you if a child is "smart" or if he or she will be successful as an adult.  Having seen good readers fail, and struggling readers pull-through, I can honestly tell you I don't even think it tells us if our kids are reading on or above-grade level, or far below.  It may tell us if they know which operation to use to solve an equation, or maybe it doesn't.  It might tell us how careful a child is to read questions exactly, or if they rush, or if they are so nervous about taking a test at the age of eight that their anxiety has literally made them vomit all over their test (I know this happens. I have seen this happen. Recently.)
What do I propose, then, you might ask? Should we make it easier? Should we wait until later?  My answer may surprise other educators, but that's okay, because today I am speaking primarily as a mom. I do not think it should be so difficult. I don't think our third graders should be learning the same mathematical skills I learned in sixth grade. I don't think the reading test should be so hard that the children are throwing up just thinking about it. I think school needs to be fun again--at least to some degree. Let them learn through play. Let them explore more. Let them have more recess. And if we have to take an assessment, then let's not make a big deal out of it. Let's use it as a snapshot and have some other way to look at a child's profile for the year--like a portfolio, or on-going progress monitoring that can show us a rise and fall in specific key areas, ones we can assess quickly without kids even realizing they are taking a "test."  There are certainly some times in life when we need to take assessments, when we need to understand the importance of doing our best, but, in my opinion, we've taken it too far.  And judging by the amount of tears I've seen over state assessments throughout the years--from students, teachers, and parents, I don't think I'm the only one who has had enough.
I won't even go into all the testing problems the state has had this year, with the online site glitching and scores coming back wrong, etc.  But this does add to the "What are we measuring?" factor in my opinion.
Yes, I know, I high jacked the post again. You wanted to hear about Imma.  Well, she worked really hard the last two days.  She took lots of breaks and ate lots of Cheeze-Its.  Her teachers said she was happy when she finished, that she thought she had done well.  And I'm glad she thinks that she did well, because when those results come back in a few weeks, she'll never know the difference.  I am not planning on making a big deal out of it either way. If she failed, well, we will work on the areas I know she needs to strengthen up; if she passed, I'll be very proud of her--but she doesn't need to spend any more precious time in her third grade year thinking about the STAAR test. She can just forget it even exists.
Until next year, when she has to take three STAAR assessments--including writing.  She takes after her mother when it comes to writing. She loves it. Unfortunately, STAAR won't measure that either....