Some weeks it’s harder than others to think and write about large-scale, state testing.
When you wake up to the news of horrors that took place and watch the reports that follow day after day, it’s hard to think and write about state testing.
It’s hard to think and write about state testing when your local news devotes a weeklong series (10-15 minutes out of each 30-minute newscast for five days) to issues that students are facing on a daily basis. When after a fairly depressing overview, the daily topics are things like “the ripple-effect of school shootings and secondhand trauma,” “talking to students about mental health,” “teens and the internet,” and “understanding when a teenage relationship becomes unhealthy” – the last of which reported post-pandemic trends on the YRBS which were at least as, if not significantly more, troubling than any test scores or trends reported from NAEP, state tests, or interim assessments.
Even when the context of external events is testing, the relative position of our kind of testing in the cosmos is put into perspective.
Like when the nationwide Emergency Alert System was tested earlier this month, and it was considered necessary in the days leading up to the test to issue repeated reminders/warnings via television, radio, and the internet to make sure your phone was powered down prior to 2:20 if you need to keep a phone hidden for personal safety reasons.
Or when a family friend went in for what was expected to be a routine annual test and came out with life-altering news.
It’s hard to think and write about large-scale, state testing.
But in the midst of it all we go on because we have to go on.
After 9/11, the TAC meeting was cancelled, but we were in the office on 9/12, 9/13, and the fax machine churning out School and District Reports to be reviewed was the only sound as we paused at noon on September 14, the National Day of Prayer and Remembrance.
This week, our brains allow us to process and possess both those videos from the music festival and the videos of the premiere of Taylor Swift’s concert film.
We go on.
During weeks like this it’s hard to think and write about large-scale, state testing.
During weeks like this…
District superintendents do their best week to provide resources and materials to their schools and communities.
Principals review all of those policies and procedures that they have to have in place that the rest of us don’t like to think about.
Teachers interact with their students as they do day after day after day.
Those of us in large-scale, state testing might add another item to the Sensitive Topic list or decide to swap out a passage on the Reading Test or reframe a scenario on the Mathematics Test.
That’s the thing.
Even when the world returns to a more “normal” state, other events will always overshadow large-scale, state testing. Unless, or until, we do something wrong. And that’s OK.
State testing should never be the most pressing education issue to discuss or the school-related problem to solve. Never front page news. Never the highest priority
Except to those of us who chose this path. Those who chose to make it our priority.
When you choose a career in large-scale assessment you know that you are on the outside looking in. You are on the periphery. A tangent. Ideally, an afterthought.
Nevertheless, like other periodic screenings, we perform a critical function.
And we will continue to do so.
Even in weeks when it’s hard to think and write about large-scale, state testing.
Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay
Embrace the Absurd 