Misguided New Guidance for Student Promotions

In today's Wall Street Journal,  New Guidance for Student Promotions reveals that NYC schools are adopting a more subjective model of assessment, “teachers will compile promotion portfolios for students at risk…in a departure from the past decade’s heavy reliance on test scores to determine which students advance to the next grade.” Over the course of two decades, I have taught in New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut. As for this new(?) promotion portfolio approach?  All I can say is," Been there, done that, got the T-shirt!" As a matter-of-fact, back in the early 1990’s, designing a T-shirt logo to demonstrate reading comprehension was one of the alternative assessment options available to those students who just didn’t test well.    

Subjectively graded, promotion portfolios can be misleading. At the start of one school year, most of my ninth grade students were barely able to write a decent paragraph, no less an essay.  When I was caught, during an observation, teaching very basic writing skills, I was told to move on because my students had mastered the five-paragraph essay as evidenced by their portfolios. Upon further review, the “artifacts” and rubrics in their portfolios confirmed essay-writing mastery. An amazing essay was even enclosed as proof in each of the portfolios.  Of course, after discussing the situation with a fifth grade teacher, I discovered that it was the final essay, a product of eight weeks of instruction, four corrected drafts, three conferences with a teacher (who provided paragraphing and punctuation advice), a couple of peer feedback sessions and; then, in some cases, the final essay, to be forever filed in child’s promotion portfolio, was typed by the student’s mom, who tweaked it to perfection…just a little. 

Even though I offered writing and reading help to my students after school, most didn’t think they really needed it. After all, very little writing was required of them. The new curriculum encouraged the use of technology to demonstrate comprehension, express creativity or to analyze research.  Power Points, blogs, webpages, and movies were assigned rather than the writing of an onerous essay, short story or the dreaded thesis paper.  As for reading, students were allowed to self-select their books so frequently that few had the reading stamina to handle selections of any depth such as The Scarlet Letter, The Grapes of Wrath, or the plays of Shakespeare. Instead, they read summaries for assigned books in Sparks Notes and Pink Monkey or located a movie version.  And when allowed to self-select, a few of my graduating seniors revealed that they had only read one book in high school, but read it over and over again! One student said that he had only read two books in his life! He re-read The Lemonade Wars five times in elementary school and Fahrenheit 451 whenever a self-selected novel was assigned in high school.

While I disagreed with many of the models of instruction and modes of assessment implemented, I had no choice but to comply…most of the time. For example, in one high school, it was decreed that Stand and Deliver instruction was too authoritarian! There must be a cooperative learning community! Over the summer, desks were removed and replaced by folding tables and chairs. I remember my dilemma when I was told that twelve of my twenty-nine students had to be seated in the front row because of attention deficit issues.  I didn’t’ have desks.  Therefore, there was no front row!   Some of my students were over six feet tall, and one of them weighed almost 240 pounds! Fitting students around a table and positioning the tables so that everyone could see the Smartboard was a nightmare! And talk about a distracting dynamic! Even the students without ADHD had trouble concentrating sitting hip to hip with a classmate!   

Finally, I offer you the anguish of a mother. Her son advanced from grade to grade via his promotion portfolio.  At the age of eighteen, it was discovered that he couldn’t read and write well enough to pass the proficiency test required to graduate.  He was then assigned an extra class every day.  It had only twenty students.  The students were seated at desks, organized into neat rows, and all  eyes were faced toward the front of the room.  At the front of the room was a teacher, who was standing and delivering the instruction these students so desperately needed and had needed for a very long time. The mother of that boy remained in my classroom after a parent/teacher conference and quietly asked me, “Why did it take so long for my boy to get this kind of teaching? How can a kid go through years of school and wind up with nothing? Thank God for those tests! If he hadn’t failed them, no one would know to help him! How does such a thing happen? There should’ve been more tests…and sooner!” 

I agreed with her,then; and I agree with her, now. We need more rigorous, objective, standardized tests; and the tests need to be administered every year starting in the third grade. Then, the results of those tests have to be evaluated immediately and used to re-design instruction accordingly. Tests are measurement tools.  When a scale warns us that we have a weight problem, we don’t throw out the scale and buy one without numbers so that we can be happier when we weigh ourselves. Rather than fix assessments so that more students can pass them, focus on fixing the problems the tests are revealing! Maybe it’s time to retire the student-centered model and challenge our children to challenge themselves via an achievement-oriented model.   Because one day, these students will become adults who must face a test that can’t be fixed: Can they do more than survive, can they thrive in a complex, highly-technological, global economy? Their ability to excel on that test should be the criteria used to form new guidance for student promotions!