Learning, Not Testing, Is The Standard

“Get your head out of the cockpit,” I’ve heard more than one flight instructor shout. More colorful instructors ordered me to remove my head from a place other than the cockpit.

They were telling me to stop watching the instruments and pay more attention to where I was flying the plane. Pilots have died while staring fixedly at a rapidly unwinding altimeter.

Good educators, like good pilots, need to keep their eyes on where they are going, not on their performance assessments, tests or myriad other instruments and indicators used in their profession.

Target-fixated on their instruments, many of today’s educators are crashing and burning with the nation’s youth on board.

The purpose of education is to facilitate the acquisition of useful knowledge and skills that students need to be successful in their lives. Education is about learning, not about all the constantly changing gauges and gadgets that make up the process of education.

Concerned about the deteriorating literacy and academic achievement of Texas schoolchildren, the Texas Legislature in 1984 gave in to union demands to raise teacher salaries. But the lawmakers tied those raises to higher teacher standards and accountability, plus testing to assure taxpayers and parents that they were getting their money’s worth.

One of the instruments added to the state’s educational machinery was the Texas Assessment of Academic Skills, which measures basic skills in reading, writing and math in grades 4, 8 and 10.

Like instruments in an airplane, low TAAS test results were designed to warn parents, teachers and administrators about problems that need immediate attention. Educators were instructed to avoid teaching for the TAAS tests, which measure the minimal skills needed for students to succeed in school.

Texas teachers need a good flight instructor sitting behind them shouting, “Get your heads out of the cockpit!” Teachers have developed target fixation on the TAAS tests. They need to tear their eyes off the TAAS gauge and start to concentrate on where they are supposed to go.

Instead, teachers have principals demanding that they raise their TAAS results and stop handing out Ds and Fs. Similarly, principals hear the same from administrators who hear it from superintendents who hear it from school boards.

Too often everyone in public education is watching the gauges; too seldom is anyone paying attention to where they are going.

A local teacher who asked to remain anonymous described in detail how teachers are pressured to sidetrack regular curricula for extended periods prior to TAAS exams. They concentrate class time solely on TAAS preparation. “Instead of learning material to grow on for the next grade, students are being ‘held back’ by studying for TAAS,” she wrote.

I’m sure she is right. But the customary response to this problem is to blame TAAS and suggest that it be discarded. The fault, dear educators, lies not with the basic skills test, it lies with a pathological fixation on a simple measurement gauge.

State education auditors should yank the accreditation of schools caught teaching the TAAS test during regular class time. Principals, administrators and superintendents caught pressuring teachers to set aside regular curricula for TAAS preparation should be fired, just as they should be fired for pressuring teachers to dumb down their studies and hand out social promotions.

There should be more TAAS tests, not fewer. They should be used in every grade, not just three. They should become a quick, routine measurement of a student’s level of academic achievement. People cannot improve what they do not measure.

Educators need academic skills tests the same way pilots need fuel gauges and altimeters. Just don’t fixate on your instruments.

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