Last week I endured what had to be one of the worst professional experiences of my life, and that’s saying something since I’ve been a teacher for over 30 years now.  I live in a state that is bankrupt–services have been slashed, jobs have been lost, paranoia abounds.  I lost a great deal of faith in politicians and their ability to solve problems a long time ago, so mostly I concentrate on local issues and on helping my students make the best choices they can.  I taught in public schools in California and Tennessee for 21 years, but worked for a number of years outside of that system when I took a job at a private school that offered me housing and a way to move back to California.  Last year I accepted a position as a consultant to help a small district start up a K-12 charter school and was happy to find myself back in the public school system.  I love the fact that one of our country’s goals is to educate everyone, regardless of income, neighborhood, or readiness.  We teachers embrace every child that enters our classroom and do the best we can to help them advance towards their goals.  Particularly now, I so appreciate anyone who is willing to take up this challenge because I know how difficult this job can be.

In working with the administrators of the charter school–an idealistic, inspirational group–I agreed to teach one class to help gain credibility with the teachers for whom I was a mentor.  I was happy to do this because I love the time I spend with my students.  However, mid-year I was told that I could not teach the following year unless I brought my credential up-to-date by taking a test to prove that I was competent to work with students whose primary language was not English.  This made me roll my eyes a bit since I have worked with ELL (English Language Learners)  in my classes since my student teaching days in San Jose, but the California Department of Education had determined that passing a six-hour test would reveal my qualifications far more accurately than my experience, degrees, and honors.  We teachers are used to the yearly mandates that require X-amount of in-service hours listening to presentations on whichever topic has been embraced as the quick-fix of the season.  I expected this CTEL exam to be more of the same.

I was wrong.  In a year when my little school district had to figure out how to slash millions from their bare-bone budget, they were required to cough up $10,000 for a 50-hour workshop for 16 experienced teachers who lacked the proper credential saying they were qualified to work with ELL students.  Each teacher needed to pay out-of-pocket $300 to register for the test, $55 to apply for the credential, and $45 to be finger-printed to prove we were who we said we were.  We missed a total of four days of school to attend the Thursday-Sunday sessions that were scheduled for two consecutive weeks, making an exhausting 14 straight days of work for the full-time teachers (plus they needed to prepare lesson plans for their substitutes and study for the upcoming test).  The test was scheduled for the day after our last day of school and the nearest testing centers were 200 miles away, requiring us to either car pool at 5 a.m. to make the 8:00 start time or pay for a hotel room.  On the day of the test, approximately 300 of us were herded into a high school in the Los Angeles area; it’s important to remember that this was one of thirteen test centers in the state.  I could go on about the prison-like atmosphere, over-the-top security measures, and stress-inducing testing conditions, but in truth, our students are required to study in classrooms like this every day.  I’m actually a pretty good test-taker, but after three separate test modules consisting of 150 multiple choice questions and four essays, I gave up in the fifth hour and just walked out.  I had no idea if I passed or not, and at the time, I didn’t really care.

Some good has come of this.  I have a greater sympathy for my high school students who face high-stakes testing several times a year.  I have been reminded that a portfolio which contains a body of work is a far more useful assessment than a one-time test.  I have been reenergized to work to reform education, something I haven’t felt for a long-time.  The system is out of whack–it doesn’t take a scan-sheet to figure that out.  Decisions that impact the classroom should be made on the local level.  Educators, not accountants looking for numbers on a spread sheet, should determine what is needed to help our students achieve.  Teachers should be treated like professionals, and to do this, we have to support changes in the tenure system that allows incompetent teachers to keep their jobs.  When I sat in the workshop and the test for the CLAD credential, I felt like I was being punished.  It occurred to me later on that this was a lame attempt to get rid of the dead weight under the assumption that a good teacher should also be a good test taker.

Let’s take it a step further.  Studies have shown that a student’s grades (or to put it another way, track record) in high school are the best predictor of how that student will fare in college–the UC system has tried to eliminate SAT scores from its admission process.  Last year my students took a total of four standardized tests–I found one, taken in both the fall and spring, to be useful.  The NWEA test is online, relatively inexpensive, and can be administered in 50 minutes per subject area.  Teachers can access the results in a week.  On the other hand, the STAR tests, which ate up a week of instructional time, require a mountain of test booklets–3 per student–that cannot be used again.  The teachers can access the students’ scores only after the kids have moved on from their classes.  The more I thought about this, getting rid of all but the NWEA would save millions and millions of dollars.  If we dumped the state-mandated workshops and provided professional development on the local level based on the needs of the teachers, well, we could balance the state budget, rehire the pink-slipped teachers and staff, and focus our time, money, and effort on educating our children.  If a teacher is struggling, we should have the resources available in that teacher’s district to offer help.  If the teacher is not cut out for the profession, we should have an effective, efficient and fair way of replacing him or her.

It’s getting harder and harder to entice people to become teachers–we set up hoop after hoop for them to jump through.  I spent part of my time in the workshop and at the test site trying to encourage people to hang in there and not leave the profession.  I can think of no more difficult and no more rewarding job than teaching.  To attract the best, we must treat teachers like trusted, respected professionals.  We don’t need more one-size-fits-all tests.  We need competent administrators who have the time and the means to provide their teachers with the tools they need to excel in the classroom.  Teachers need to be accountable, but it should be a local accountability—the students, their parents, and fellow teachers know who is doing a good job in the classroom and who should be replaced.  We should radically simplify the system for funding schools so superintendents do not have to wait breathlessly for the legislature to decide what to do each year.  America has fallen behind the rest of the world in standardized test scores, but it leads the world in our desire that all of our citizens have the right to a free, quality education.  We can do this without leaving any children or teachers behind.