Standardized Testing Accommodations: Shifting Perspective

I wanted to follow up on one of the questions that I had from my blog post last week.  I looked up the document that details the available accommodations for the PSSA, PSSA-M and Keystone, for students without IEPS or 504 Plans. 

I was surprised to see that the last time that this was revised was 1/20/2011.  I would have thought that the guidelines for these accommodations were updated annually.

The first topic covered is Testing Environment, which includes: time, place, grouping and other.  Students can request extended time on the test, as long as they are productive but it can not extend overnight. Seating arrangement can be changed and testing in a separate room is also an option.  I wonder how often students are given these accommodations without having to request them, or have another adult request them for them.  Do teachers sometimes decide that a student will need these accommodations and advocate for them? Are they often used in the reality of practice?

In search of real live teacher accounts of PSSA testing accommodations, I stumbled upon an article titled “Confession of a cheating teacher” by Benjamin Herold (thenotebook) and I was intrigued.  The teacher in this article openly admits to helping her 11^th grade students cheat on the PSSA’s by providing them definitions to words and discussing the reading passages with them.  She felt this was an appropriate response to the increasing demands of high stakes testing, and that it’s justified because she’s not the only teacher doing this. 

What if we could come up with proper accommodations to take stress of students as much as possible and alleviate some of these demands?

While it would be ideal for the tests to be less demanding, change at that level will take more time.  It would be nice if the standards for education didn’t change every 4 years, but there is only so much we can do to combat that.  How can teachers work within the system to accommodate students?  What strategies can be built into daily lessons to prepare students for these tests? I’m thinking along the lines of what teachers can do now, without resorting to cheating and possibly losing their jobs. 

To quote Herold, the author of the article, “In retrospect, she wishes she had found a way to meaningfully address her students’ deep-seated academic deficiencies and the troubling school culture created by high-stakes testing. Instead she cheated.”

What this says to me is that the education system needs to be looked at holistically.  Trying to place a higher importance on the testing or the teaching is trying to decide which came first, the chicken or the egg.  You can’t have one without the other, and their relationship is deeply intertwined.  Assessments, in their various forms, hold teachers and students accountable and inform decision making about instruction.  When the assessment changes, the instruction should change and vice versa.  To eliminate all variables so that assessment could directly correlate to teaching is difficult, but why not aim for that?  Why not try to measure a student’s true knowledge as authentically as possible?

Maybe this means accommodating all students as much as they need, regardless of if they have an IEP or make request for accommodations.  Maybe it means keeping closer tabs on a student’s progress.  Maybe it means putting in the extra effort to give them the support and clarity that they need.

I think that the more support and strategies that students are given prior to a test, if scaffolded correctly, should really set them up for success.  I’m not saying I agree with everything on the PSSA or teaching to the test, but maybe we can take some of the fear away, and give students the tools that they need to look at these tests critically.  All students should have access to a higher level thinking and strategies that they can employ, because standardized testing isn’t going away anytime soon.  If not the PSSA, it will be the SAT or some other test.  Plus, teaching students strategies will give them something more meaningful that they can take with them after the tests are over, rather than just emptying their brain.

In search of another point of view, I read a blog post titled “PA English Prof Opts Out Son from PSSA Test” .  Suddenly my search, which was so concrete and safe in the beginning had spiraled down to a much darker side of standardized testing, flush with strong opinions and few solutions.  Sure, it’s great that we can all get together and hate these tests.  Enter any classroom of students, mention standardized testing, and the unison groan will be unanimous. 

Anyway, this mother expressed frustration while working with her son to prepare him for the PSSA. I’m curious if this student, her son, was ever given the appropriate accommodations or scaffolding in preparation for this test. Or was he just exhausted and bored from working through packet after packet of practice questions?

Is opting out of these tests all together really the solution? Can we not foster a love of learning and also prepare students for higher level thinking tests at the same time?

I left the following comment on the article:

“It's a shame to see such high-stakes placed on these tests.  It seems like a terrible snowball affect, with more pressure comes poorer performance and less funding, which only perpetuates the problem.  What if students could be given more accommodations and the stakes were lowered? Teachers and students should be held accountable but not at the cost of their jobs and education.”

I don’t think the entire system needs to change, but maybe just a shift towards a stronger student centered perspective.  Providing appropriate accommodations for students on all types of assessment would be a good step in this direction and maybe we could start to look at these tests a little differently.