Our conversation about testing was so robust that we broke it into two parts. Did you miss the first part of "Assess the Test"? Listen to it here.The impact standardized testing has on students, educators and school communities extends long beyond test day.In Part II of Assess the Test, we move beyond talking about the tests themselves and discuss the overall accountability system.Join us for this exploration of how 20 years of "accountability" in Florida have drained the joy out of teaching and learning.

Episode 16 Show Notes:

Guests

Show Resources

Transcript

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GuestsAnthony Colucci, President Brevard Federation of TeachersVicki Kidwell, President Clay County Education Association Bethany Koch, High school English teacher from Clay CountyMatt Yount, Teacher from Brevard County

ResourcesMore information on the legislation that will create the new testsBeyond the Bubble: Americans Want Change on High Stakes Assessments Moving Beyond the Failure of Test-Based AccountabilityFlorida Department of Education: Florida Assessment of Student Thinking (note: many of the promises made on this webpage about the new test are not included in the proposed legislation)

TranscriptAndrew Spar, FEA President: Hi, this is FEA president Andrew Spar. To stay on top of all the latest news and issues impacting our public schools, be sure to follow FEA on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. For more information on this podcast, visit FEAweb.org/podcast.Sharon Nesvig: You're listening to Educating from the Heart. Thank you for joining our lively conversations with support professionals, parents and students as they share issues that matter most in our public schools. Here are your hosts, Tina Dunbar and Luke Flynt.Luke Flynt, Host: Welcome to another episode of Educating from the Heart. I am Luke Flynt, along with my cohost, Tina Dunbar. And Tina, you know, schools are the place where a childhood happens, where students get to explore their creativity, learn to think critically and develop the skills they will need to succeed in life and in the workplace. Or at least that's what they should be.Tina Dunbar, Host: You're so right, Luke. And in our last episode, we chatted with four educators about Florida's transition away from the FSA to a new testing system. While many educators are excited about the shift, many also shared their concern that this might be more of the same, a new name without major changes to the test itself.In the second part of our conversation, we'll focus less on the tests themselves and more on the overall accountability system. Our educators even address how testing has transformed our schools from places of joy and creativity to a place filled with anxiety due to the intense focus on standardized assessments.You know, Luke, you are so right. Life is so much more than knowing the right answers to a series of multiple-choice questions.Luke: It absolutely is. There is so much about our students that cannot be measured but is still very important to know. Part two of Assessing the Test begins with Bethany Koch sharing her love for English and how it can enrich the lives of all students. But she also shares the reality that Florida's fixation on testing has had in her classroom, as well as the classroom of many of her colleagues, where the love for teaching and learning has been replaced with dread.Bethany Koch, HS English teacher: I think one of the most heartbreaking, and someone that loves English, right? Like I went into this because I love English. I love books. But one of the most heartbreaking consequences of the FSA is that it is effectively killing some of the things that students and teachers love about our subject. We’ve seen the loss of fiction and poetry. And now our new standards are a little bit better on that, but, we focus more heavily upon non-fiction texts. We focus heavily on civics texts, which should be covered in history. And ultimately English is not something that can be distilled down to right and wrong like math. It's not one right answer. So, we have sucked creativity dry out of this subject because we want, and what English teachers have been doing to, in order to succeed on these tests is asking kids to only focus on the standards where you can have these right and wrong answers, and to think about English and writing and reading in very black and white terms. And it's painful. It is painful every year to, you know, to do that.Matt Yount, Brevard Teacher: I think to Bethany's point, I think a dangerous, subtext that we're sending is that if a subject is not tested, it's therefore not as valuable. And I think that's a dangerous precedent to kind of imply. That's what causes the arts to evaporate. That's what causes certain electives to cease to exist when funding decisions are having to be made. And so while I love ELA [English Language Arts] as much as Bethany, I also recognize there are students that will barely read on grade level, but their creativity is not limited to their words.I think the elephant in the room is that we only have a finite amount of time in any given day, right? So, one thing that's always been daunting to me as a teacher, the standards are sometimes so ambitious that they're actually not serving the purpose that they were originally intended to serve because they can't really guide instruction. If you've given me four hours of instructional goals, and I've got a two-hour block. So, I think we're going to still have to rectify every special interest group can't get what they want. I can't teach these kids every single thing they're supposed to know about ancient history in a 25-minute block, four times a week. It's just not reality. So, I think we need to have deeper conversations about are the standards really expected to be taught in a 180-day school year that's interrupted 20% of the time by testing (and then who knows how many percent of the time by all the other minutia that we deal with on a daily basis inside public schools)?Bethany Koch: And they know they aren’t because they're not tested. Right. We talked about research, right? Research is a standard that we do. And as a teacher, I could progress, monitor that, right? I could give my lessons and build in checkpoints and summative and formative assessments to determine whether I'm effectively teaching research. But do I value research then over a skill that I know is going to be on that test over a skill that I know is going to reflect on my performance it's going to reflect on my possible pay for the next year?  I mean, Matt is absolutely right, and this is not like his confessional moment, this is a confessional moment for profession. We do not teach the skills that aren't going to be tested because those are not the ones that are going to be reflected on us.Luke: This discussion of how the testing has narrowed the curriculum, I think is a really important one. And candidly, one of my major concerns when I first heard about the proposal for this state-based progress monitoring is that the curriculum would be narrowed even more.And so when, when I taught, I had a phenomenal administrator, so shout out to Dave Kramek. He treated his educators like we were professionals, and I was allowed to go in that classroom and teach. I know that was almost, you know, six, seven years ago. I know that increasingly educators are told that they all have to be on the same page on the same day, and if the state is now going to test and test and test, it seems like the pressure from up high for everybody to be rigid is going to increase that much more. And I see some nodding of heads, so I think you agree, so I'll stop talking and just maybe if you can expound a little more on, on the head nodding,Anthony Colucci, BTF President: What I'm hearing from our teachers is the pressure to be on the same page is preventing them from differentiating instruction properly, which goes against what you should be doing for progress monitoring. So, do you all want us on the same page or do you want us tailoring instruction based on progress monitoring? So, we have a bunch of different goals going on simultaneously that do not work well together. So, I totally agree that may become a problem.Matt Yount: I think something that's compounding that problem too, Anthony, is that we're seeing a, a veteran teacher core leaving in droves, and it's being replaced, if it's being replaced at all, it's being replaced by out of area teachers, which are some of the best teachers I've ever worked with, but don't have the traditional educational pedagogy or brand-new teachers. And so, I think districts are trying to like bridge that gap if you will by having these cookie cutter lessons made, but all that's really doing is hamstringing the veteran teachers that are able to work within their experience and their bag of tricks, so to speak, to reach those students and meet those standards. And at the same time, ironically, providing undue stress to those young teachers that haven't quite figured out that you're allowed to go off the page if it's a good learning opportunity for students.I work with a confidence that, you know, I don't think most have of “I'm going to do what's best for my kids every day.” And if that's what's on the page, then it's, what's on the page. If that's a deeper discussion that we're diving into, then I'm taking that and that timestamp can go somewhere else and I'm going to have that deep discussion. But I think a lot of teachers are working with a fear mentality in a pressurized situation where they think that at any moment, if they're caught teaching anything outside of the plan,