Why would they? Why wouldn't they? On the Atlanta teachers and testing.

I admit a little bit of glee at the mental picture of Atlanta teachers getting together with a stack of standardized test booklets and a few pizzas and some number 2 pencils to make a party out of changing their students' answers on the state tests. "Pass me some pepperoni. And what was number 22 again?"

NPR was doing a talk show segment today on the testing scandal. The question they kept asking was, "Why?" And to my surprise, I was sitting in the car saying, "Why the heck not?" But let me answer why.

Teachers in public education work in a fundamentally flawed system. And when you work in a fundamentally flawed system, you grow tired of trying to measure up in a fundamentally flawed system to a fundamentally flawed standard that no one thinks that we can reach.

To tell teachers that our "goal" is to reach 100% proficiency by 2012 or 2013 or 2014 is just asinine. Seriously? 100% proficiency? I can tick off the names of several students who will prevent that national goal from happening. And they won't prevent that goal from happening because they are trying to prevent it from happening, they will prevent that goal from happening because they didn't hold a pencil until they were 12 years old. So the idea that they would be proficient in reading and math at grade level in their second, third, or fourth language within a year or two of arriving in the country is just asinine. 

Then there's the AYPs. Our school has 18 benchmarks that we have to meet. Other schools have 2 or 3; it all depends on the population of the school. And here comes that magic number again, 100%. You have to hit 100% of your benchmarks to show adequate yearly progress. And it is an all or nothing deal. You can hit 17 out of the 18 benchmarks, and you still won't make AYPs because of one sub group. So hell, even if we are making progress, then we aren't making enough progress. What the hell kind of a system is that?

Then there is the actual testing system itself. We don't test kids at the beginning of the year and then test them at the end of the year to measure progress or to check the quality of our teaching. No. We test kids at the end of each school year. And the test measures whether or not they are meeting standards at grade level. Who cares if we've taught a kid to read better than he had the year before? Who cares if we've taught a kid math that he didn't previously understand? If he isn't at grade level, then we're not making progress.

And did I mention that we measure apples against oranges? We don't look at the class of 2015's progress from one year to the next. Nope, we compare one seventh grade class of students to an entirely new class of seventh grade students. Whose progress are we showing by doing that?

And don't even get me started on the unfairness of the testing for students for whom English is a second or third or fourth language. That is an entirely different post.

Back to the Atlanta teachers and that pizza. Why? Because the system is broken. And sometimes, when you are working in a broken system, you lose your way. I've never compromised my integrity when it comes to the state tests, but I do understand the weariness of working under a broken system and wondering if anyone else knows that it is broken. More absurdly, I wonder why we are always talking about all the problems with the system, and no positive change is happening.