Good Teaching -----> Good Test Scores?

Earlier this year, I wrote a piece about what I would be doing with my classes if the test wasn't coming.  

I recently received this comment from commenter, Becky von St. Paul:

"It's been my experience (32 years worth) that if you teach the curriculum and make sure that students have mastered skills, the test scores come. I know many teachers who fall back on test prep, etc., but these things are truly NOT necessary if you have really taught the kids what they need to know."

I've been interested in the question of whether good teaching really leads to good test scores for some time.  I appreciate Becky's comment and believe what she says must be true in her context.  Though I'd love to believe that good teaching always leads to good test scores, I don't think it's that simple.  

For example, standardized tests--while narrow and blunt instruments (to which I'd say goodbye in a heart beat)--can be reasonably appropriate measures of learning for some students... but not for others. A student who enters my 8th grade class with a 2nd grade reading level should not be taking the 8th grade ELA test.  And good teaching for one year that helps said student grow will not lead to a "good" score on the 8th grade test.  The student could have progressed several; grade levels, but the growth might not even show up at all on the test because the texts and tasks are still inaccessible for the student.  This is where context begins to matter.  How many students do we teach who are in this or a similar situation?  If the answer is a lot, then it will show in the test scores.

Another piece of context that can affect teaching, learning and test scores are the conditions for students at a school and in their home environments.  I've had certain classes and certain years where students' social emotional needs were so high, due to conditions both in the school and outside, that I spent a lot of class time working on skills that would allow students to process what they were going through so that they could begin to turn their attention to academics.  The end result of this work?  Many students grew in their ability to simply be students, see themselves as students, and take an interest in their own learning.  This, in the face of 50% odds they would not finish high school. I taught less traditional academic skills with those classes, but I know they made tons of progress in their ability to self-reflect, problem-solve and collaborate.  For some students, more motivation naturally meant better test scores. For others, much more practice was needed than that year provided for my students to significantly improve the skills that were tested. 

Using a single, narrow test as a measure of student learning--which is still what is being done with these tests, no matter how much proponents of testing speak of multiple measures--supposes that all students need to learn the same things in a year and arrive at the same point.  That pushes teachers to teach material at a level that is often not appropriate for all of their students. It also pushes teachers to adhere to THE curriculum, even when that may not be the most appropriate learning experience for a particular group or sub group of students.  This actually causes many students to get "left behind," by current accountability structures.

Finally, what kind of good teaching are we talking about? Toward what end? Fellow blogger, Bill Ferriter, and NBCT who is highly skilled and committed to teaching his students to be global citizens, leveraging digital media, has written before that despite his success with students around his goal of teaching them 21st century skills, his students' test scores were often not as high as the teacher's down the hall. This was because of the choices he made about what kind of learning was most important. After a while, he began to change his practice in order to ensure good test scores. (He later decided to teach an untested subject so he could focus more fully on the skills he believes are most important for his students' futures.)

What do you think?  When does good teaching lead to high test scores? When doesn't it?

[image credit: findmycompany.com]

Comments

[James Boutin]

I completely agree with you, Ariel. There are so many factors to consider when trying to answer the question in your title.

I tend to think that nearly anything between mediocre to excellent teaching will be enough for many students to achieve the necessary test scores.

So much depends on the test, the curriculum, the teacher, and the student's background.

Students behind grade-level who come from families who don't encourage their pursuit of education; schools dealing with extremely high absence rates; teachers trying to make sense of their first few years; tests that don't measure what's going on in the classroom; and a myopic focus on reading and math skills ALL play a role in test scores.

I think it's far too simplistic to say good teaching either does or does not lead to the appropriate test scores.

As a result - these scores should only be used as diagnostic tools (along with many other, often more valuable tools) for educators and schools to use in deciding how to help a given child in the future.

[Barbara Manley]

Good teaching does not always lead to good test scores. Students who come to us performing on grade level or maybe slightly below, without significant emotional or cognitive challenges, generally do well with the grade level curriculum and thus do well on standardized tests.

However, our classes are also comprised of children who may be 1 or more years below grade level and/or have emotional or cognitive challenges that make it difficult for them to access the grade level curriculum. "Yes", learning happens, and "yes", progress happens, but it does not happen fast enough to perform well on grade level standardized tests. For these children, learning happens after much exposure to the content, often including multiple approaches to teaching the same concept and is often impacted by the child's own view of learning and success. If only we could test these students on the level that was within one year of their demonstrated understanding. Only then might they see the progress they have made!

I do think with expertise teaching and small class sizes, we can narrow the performance gap of these kids and those of their on-grade level peers. However, it will not take one year, rather several years to accomplish and most definitely will require more time on learning, more academic support classes, and a chance for these children to build positive relationships with adults and peers.

[Tom Wandrum]

I just blogged about this today. http://tommytude2mrdude.blogspot.com/2012/07/is-main-goal-all-about-score.html?m=1

[Janet Abercrombie]

I remember teaching order of operations. I remember the checklists I used to make check marks when I observed students mastering the concept. We reviewed it multiple times during the year in reviews, exit slips, and games. I have proof that every student mastered the skill on multiple occassions.

As I walked around the room during testing time, I watched a student look at the problem 3 + 3 x 3 + 3 x 3 + 3 = ?. He wrote in on his scratch paper and proceeded to work it right to left.

I stopped watching students take the tests. I couldn't look.

[Bill Ferriter]

This is a good piece, Pal -- and your examples are perfect for illustrating the points that you're trying to make.

Let me add a few:

1). In our state, the reading exam covers only 2 out of 6 of our state's standards -- and (no surprise) the standards covered are those that are the easiest to assess with multiple choice questions.

So things like being able to participate in a collaborative, learning centered conversation -- a skill that IS in the curriculum and IS incredibly important to future success -- ISN'T measured at all.

I spent TONS of class time on those skills because I believed they mattered WAY more than the crap that was tested. If you watched a collaborative conversation in my classroom, you'd have been blown away.

But because those skills weren't tested, my "performance" looked bad when compared to the performance of my peers. Essentially, teaching collaborative dialogue -- which should be at the TOP of any teacher's to-do list -- was disincentivized simply because it wasn't measured.

2). The same is true for all kinds of skills that commenters harp about. Think about problem solving or learning to be persuasive or learning how to work in groups or learning to manage information or learning how to build networks of co-learners.

Those kinds of behaviors matter WAY more than the things we're testing, yet we do NOTHING to assess the work teachers are doing in these areas.

We have to get to the point where we accurately define what we REALLY want students to know and be able to do -- rather than get to the point where we define what we can easily and affordably assess and use that as our definition of what gets measured.

Any of this make sense?
Bill

[John Chase]

Excellent commentary Ariel, I just shared/posted it on FB and Twitter.

Ironically, the social and emotional competencies that you and Bill identify and discuss are in fact crucial for preparing young people for adulthood and employment.

While mastery of content and literacy skills are important for career and college readiness, these performance standards are too often trumped or canceled out when a student or employee lacks a work ethic and has not developed a personal code of conduct.

There is a growing segment of students that perform poorly on standardized tests due to a lack of ambition and perseverance not a lack of ability, knowledge, and skills.

When relying on a standardized test score to determine student achievement it is important distinguish and differentiate between students who are truly deficient in skills and those students who simply stopped listening or failed to finish reading a passage due to a lack of interest or persistence.

It is primarily the process of learning that engages students and prepares them for college and careers, not the content or the assessment.

Our task as facilitators is to design nonroutine and content rich activities that stimulate the heart and mind of students while “allowing for a variety of routes toward completion.”

Education reform is being lead by business and corporate interests, not academics.

We are using standardized tests to supposedly measure student achievement and teacher performance because these "weapons of mass instruction" are easily marketed, mass produced, and sold.

It is well established that students learn differently and teachers have been encouraged to differentiate instruction to accommodate different learning styles.

Concurrently, students test differently and we should be assessing them using a variety of measures and performance tasks.

Students aren't standardized and most 21st century occupations aren't standardized so why are we being forced to standardize instruction and student assessment?

College and career readiness is not simply about understanding a McGraw Hill textbook or filling in the right bubble on a standardized test but knowing how to behave and cooperate with people in the classroom and on the job.

For those who are interested, I have more to say on this topic here...

http://www.learningfromlyrics.org/teachyourchildrenwell.htm

[Vr2ltch]

Someone close to me teaches in an affluent district. This teacher stated that the teachers in a particular grade level had not taught writing (at all) and 80% of their students still scored at goal and above. Either the tests are biased toward those who are of means or poverty is really one of the major reasons behind poor test scores (or what has come to be known as achievement).