School Testing Law Misguided

by Susan Campbell
March 10, 2004, Hartford Courant

If our current increased emphasis on standardized testing in schools was a medical model, we could be sued for malpractice.

So says Jesse Turner, director of the Connecticut State Literacy Center at Central Connecticut State University. People who are skeptical of the culture's dependence on standardized testing are horrified at President Bush's signature education effort, No Child Left Behind, which requires annual testing in reading and math and penalizes schools when scores aren't up to snuff.

This on top of a spate of tests already in place. Last week, the state Senate unanimously approved a resolution that asks that Connecticut be exempted from the federal legislation. State lawmakers said Connecticut already has high-performing schools and has programs in place to boost poorer-performing ones.

For years, Turner has said that relying strictly on standardized tests for assessment of a student's performance is wrong. There are so many other ways to measure a child's performance and motivation. To parents distraught that their children don't test well, Turner asks: Do people who write the tests even know the color of your children's eyes? Do they measure your child's motivation?

Over the years, roughly 5,000 students have come through the New Britain center for assessment and help. Graduate students serve as clinicians who work one-on-one with students who are struggling. Since Bush signed his education act into law, Turner has attended countless conferences that fall into the following pattern:

"I listen intensely, diligently taking notes, collecting Power Point handouts, and wait patiently for the end of the presentation, where there will be a brief five- to 10-minute question session," says Turner. "All questions asked are given the same answer: `This is the law, and therefore everyone must follow -- or lose federal funds.'"

On Saturday, various CCSU organizations, the Eastern Connecticut State University department of education and the Connecticut Association for Reading Research will host a conference titled "Children: More Than a Test Score: Attempting To Balance the Unbalanced." Panelists include U.S. Rep. Nancy Johnson, R-5th District, and Linda Hodge, National PTA president. The keynote speaker is Susan Ohanian, an educator and author who counsels care when relying on standardized tests. There's still time to register.

So how do you go against a culture so intent on measuring? For one answer, Turner points to a large mural at his center, a colorful depiction of various children's authors planned and painted by students from New Britain's Roosevelt Middle School, with input from Farmington and Plainville students.

To prepare for the spring 2003 painting of the mural, the students kept journals. They read children's books, exchanged pen-pal letters and drew self-portraits. On the wall, one panel is a re-creation of part of the cover of "The Story of Ruby Bridges," the first African American student to integrate an all-white school. Bridges was 6 and in New Orleans at the time, and the students included a prayer Bridges was supposed to have said. She asked forgiveness for people who were mean to her.

The mural is a wild and wonderful blast of color that takes up an entire wall of the center. As Turner says, when education's sole focus is on skills, it immediately becomes boring -- for students and teachers. There is nothing boring about the mural, and Turner gets choked up when he talks about it.

The children who researched the mural, planned it and then gave up their Saturdays to paint it might struggle with standardized tests, and their schools may fall on the list of institutions that don't make adequate progress under the legislation. But those students did beautiful work, and their teacher, Margaret Shea, said they bonded as a class over it. What test measures those skills?