Adrian Neibauer confronts the dilemma facing teachers whose children know the truth about the big standardized test.
I’m a hypocrite. For decades, I’ve never put credence on standardized testing. I’ve always supported my students opting out of their annual battery of tests. I see very little value in spending three weeks stressing over a number on a test, which will bear very little fruit in the future. I do litle test preparation, aside from showing my students the platform they will be testing on, and making sure they know how to use the tools. Do not be fooled. I place no value on the outcome of these tests, but I take standardized testing seriously. Very seriously. I have no choice. My livelihood as a teacher depends on my students scoring well. When I transform from human teacher to draconian proctor, it feels terrible. I try to bolter my students with speeches: if you can’t get out of it, try to get into it.1 But it sucks. The banality of standardized testing is very real.
Yet, as a parent, I’ve always forced my own children to take standardized tests. I’ve convinced myself that I want to know how my children are performing, even while simultaneously knowing that the results do not accurately represent my children’s intelligence. I tell myself that I want my children to do hard things because in life, we have to do hard things, even when we don’t see their value. We can’t opt out of life.
Since my children were old enough to test, I’ve straddled the line between parent and teacher. I have always supported my children first. I’ve taught them to be good students. Play the game. Learn the stuff. Get the grade. In the past, what has been best for my children coincides with what is best for my students, and vice versa. No more. I proctor my students, pushing them to take their locked down tests in earnest, but internally, I’m struggling to find the point of it all. My rose-colored glasses are cracked and dirty. I’m struggling to see the benefit for any child to suffer these tests.
My children are old enough now to see this transactional facade. Do grades really matter if I’m not going to college? Do I need to go to college? I’ve taught them that if they learn for the teacher, they will also be learning for themselves. And that is enough.
Standardized testing culture tells my kids (and students) it isn’t enough. You must also perform well on these tests to prove you learned. No test score. No proof. No learning.
So, when my teenage son and daughter pressed me once again to opt them out, I reluctantly resisted. I reiterated how the test may not be important to me or them, but the school and district needs those scores for funding. Teachers rely on standardized test scores to legitimatize their teaching to administration. As teenagers are prone to do, especially teenagers of a teacher, they poked holes in my hollow rhetoric.