A Glasser Quality School Teacher Considers the "Testing Woes"

I teach at a very successful charter school in VA. We're a Glasser Quality High School, meaning that we're based on Dr. William Glasser's Choice Theory, Reality Therapy, and Lead Management. Our student body is made up of at-risk kids who chose to attend our charter school, hoping for something to begin working for them in education. Most of them come to us with a transcript of F's and many of what we call "resistance behaviors," such as skipping constantly, acting out in class, and generally hanging back, as if they are not motivated to succeed.

We have been in existence for 22 years. We started up in 1988, long before the testing mania got itself moving (in 1998 in VA). Our students LOVE our school (loving education again for the first time since early elementary school) because we emphasize the kind of learning that is never forgotten. We do projects together that are likely to end up with what we call Quality Work, meaning work that you LOVE to do because it MATTERS to you and you feel PASSIONATE about it. No one has to tell you to do it. You work on it on your own. We work together with our students as part of their learning teams. From both a teacher's and student's point of view, it's an amazing education.

When statewide testing descended upon us, we realized that because they are (in VA) only a series of unconnected, irrelevant, factual multiple choice questions that are impossible to study for, the tests were going to be a very distasteful obstacle for our school. Our students and parents joined together to resist the testing, but in VA, even charter schools must take these "barrier tests."

The first few years, our students rebelled during the testing and were angry with the state and with us for subjecting them to these mindless exercises in futility. We even were put on probation from the state because they knew that our students were resisting. They sent a team to tell us that they knew this because our scores were consistently lower than it was possible to be without purposefully choosing the wrong answers.

Finally, we did what we do best. We went to the entire school community and showed them the test scores. We asked them if they liked their school. They love it. We asked them if they thought our small school could stay open if they continued to do so poorly on the testing. After a long discussion, the students asked us, "If we agree to do our best on the testing, will you agree not to even mention the testing for most of the year, and to continue doing the fun stuff in classes?" Of course, we agreed.

For the past ten years, since we achieved this agreement with our student body, our test scores have been among the highest in the state, certainly in our region. We set a goal a few years ago to hit the 95% pass rate in every subject, which we did. Now, we're working toward 97%. To achieve this, we decided, as a staff, to be a lot more relaxed about the testing, even though the existence of our school (and our jobs) depends on these test scores. We decided to trust the kids and to trust what Dr. Glasser calls "education" rather than "schooling." Teaching to these mindless tests is "schooling" at its worst. It turns kids (and teachers) off to the joys found in discovery and creativity.

I teach English to all levels at our school, from students who can barely read and write, to students who are already taking college courses while attending our school. I have them all mixed together in my classes. We don't divide by grade level. I've found that when we are having fun together, everyone is learning at their peak. The fun stuff is what they remember. I may not have taught them every single literary term, but they will enter the test feeling confident as writers and readers. They will know that they know a lot and so far, even if they hit questions on ideas we have not covered, they are managing to do quite well. Often, we have over 50% advanced pass rate in reading and writing.

I teach American Studies, too, and I've found this same approach to be essential in helping students pass the completely embarrassing US/VA History SOL test which is nothing but lists of facts, so many unrelated facts that there is no way at all to "cover" them in a single school year. Whenever I think about that test, I can't help but remember Dickens' Gradgrind saying, "Facts! Facts! Facts!" However, our students, we have found again and again, just need to go into that test feeling like they love history. They need to feel confident about themselves as historians, as people who care about their history because they see how it relates to their current lives. Then, when the test throws some curve balls at them, like asking them which president was NOT born in VA, they can figure it out because they know they know a lot.

I believe that our state governments have teachers flummoxed with all the threats about having to do well on these state tests. Teachers believe that they have to "cover" everything that is going to be on the test, and they forget about education. They get completely lost in "schooling" and they begin to worry because they do not love what they are doing and they know the kids are not having a great time either. At our school, we have found that the essential element of doing well on the tests is to simply forget about them and do what we know is going to help students improve their skills and essential understandings in ways that mean something important to their lives. Then, the testing is just a state hoop to jump through at the end of the year, not something pulling us down all year long.

The testing environment in our school is remarkable. Kids run through the halls shouting, "I passed my Geometry SOL test!" or "I got a perfect score in Reading and my first grade teacher told my parents I would never be able to learn to read!!!!!" Students realize that the testing matters to our school and they want to do well so our school has 100% pass rate. They're not embarrassed by caring how they do. They don't rag on kids who do well. They celebrate together. We all do.

Although I would definitely agree that these tests could be improved so that they test something valuable, as they stand, I suppose that the tests have helped our school because we can get waivers based on how well we're doing. These waivers allow us to try all kinds of interesting things we wouldn't be able to do otherwise. For instance, we recently got a waiver on seat time, meaning that our kids don't have to have 140 hours to earn a credit. We cut back our classes to something like 122 hours and our test scores went up! This enabled us to add another class to the year, so our students could earn 8 credits a year. This means that some of our kids can graduate in three years and most of our kids can spend quite a bit of their senior year already enrolled in the local community college, earning college credits.

The testing hasn't hurt us after all, simply because we listened to our kids' request not to "teach to the test," but to make school fun. It's amazing to us that IT WAS A CHOICE OF MINDSET that helped us, as a staff, as a school, move past the "testing woes." We decided not to worry about those tests and to use the saved time to plan out some fabulous projects and class activities that none of us will ever forget.

Love, Charlotte Wellen, NBCT, Practicum Supervisor/William Glasser Institute