Sunday, June 21, 2009
An elementary problem with SOLs
Luanne Traud
Recent columns
- Marking a difficult anniversary
- My daughter, the voter
- A few new Voices would be nice
- A rush to legislate
From the RoundTable blog
I want to talk about Virginia's Standards of Learning tests, but I do not want to talk about the administrators at William Fleming High School who stand accused of manipulating students' schedules so that their school would have better results.
That's warping the system so severely as to cast it out of the norm. Instead, I want to talk about SOLs and elementary pupils and concerns I have that the tests have become more important than the standards.
I come to this topic not as an educator but as mom to four daughters whose age gap has permitted me to attend elementary school for the last 25 years.
I've witnessed great changes, not all of them wise. I've been through phonics and whole language and back to phonics.
I've sat on lots of little chairs that I've noticed have grown harder and moved closer to the ground with each passing year. I've been homeroom mom, field trip chaperone, dance monitor, fair worker, fundraiser.
I sent one child to kindergarten reading chapter books. Another stumbled each time she encountered the word "the." I'm familiar with gifted programs, individualized education plans and in between.
All my years of elementary school through four states' education systems have taught me two things: Each child has different abilities, and more demands are continually placed on ever younger children.
Virginia holds its teachers and students to high standards, as it should. The setting of quality learning standards through input from educators and parents establishes a framework that means a second-grader in Roanoke will be exposed to the same material as a second-grader in Alexandria.
It means that each subject is given its due and that we, as a society, hold high expectations of our public school systems, and that we, as parents, are assured our children have the opportunity to learn necessary material.
The problem, though, is in how to measure school and student performance. Virginia relies on a rigorous schedule of SOL exams that begin in third grade. The state board of education could vote as early as this week on removing one of those exams, the history test, from third-graders' schedule. Children would still have history lessons -- no one is proposing to change the curriculum -- and they would still have many history SOLs throughout elementary, middle and high school.
But it would relieve some stress from overloaded third-graders and free up time spent teaching to this test to better help students comprehend all types of material that they read.
We wrote an editorial recently supporting the elimination of the exam and received letters and commentaries mostly urging the state not to mess with the test. I understand the points, but I still disagree.
Third-graders take math, reading, history and science SOLs. They spend most of the year fretting about the unfamiliarity of SOLs and having it drummed into them that poor scores not only reflect negatively on them as individuals, but they also drag down their school.
That's a lot of pressure to pile on an 8-year-old.
Add to that, this particular history test examines cumulative knowledge acquired from kindergarten through third grade. This is unlike any other history SOL they'll take in subsequent years that covers just the material learned at that grade level.
There's no other way to prep for the third-grade history exam than to review, review, review. Which sets the stage for all elementary SOLs. In early spring, teaching of new material all but stops, and SOL prepping begins.
Students go over a term's worth of material meticulously preserved in page protectors and binders. They hop onto computer sites that allow them to take practice tests, which are either the same exams or similar to ones given in previous years.
This goes on for weeks. The big test days arrive. Then school, though the calendar still shows a few more weeks, is mostly over.
Somehow, I don't think this is what the board of education intended.
My oldest daughters had standardized elementary school exams that measured reading and math skills. The only thing that set testing days off from regular school days was a note sent home encouraging students to get a good night's sleep and eat a nutritious breakfast. They also had history and science classes throughout elementary school, despite the lack of mandatory testing.
They weren't any more or any less prepared for the rigors of middle school than their youngest sister.
The prevailing complaint over dropping the third-grade history exam is this: If the test isn't required, the children will not be taught history.
This implies that unless a test is mandated, schools won't cover the material. That, then, really means our schools are teaching to tests rather than measuring what is taught to produce well-rounded students. If so, we are failing those students.
Traud is a member of The Roanoke Times editorial board.
