This fall I get the pleasure of once again teaching an “academic growth period” class at the middle school campus. Mrs. Santina and I are co-teaching a class that focuses on students and the law, and if the first week is any indication, the 17 students in our class all seem to be lawyers or judges in the making!
Last week, students prepared for and participated in a mock Supreme Court hearing in which a group of students asserted that the fictional school district they attended violated their constitutional rights by suspending them for wearing armbands in peaceful protest of a war. After the hearing (in which the “justices” ruled 6-1 in favor of the school district), we discussed the actual Supreme Court case on which our scenario was modeled, the case of Tinker v. Des Moines. Mrs. Santina and I were impressed with the passion and the skill with which students debated whether and when a school could limit the freedom of speech of students, what types of expression constituted “political speech”, and whether certain types of speech are more likely to cause disruption than others. Students grappled with truly thorny issues thoughtfully.
After wrapping up this AGP class last week, I went back to preparing my report on last year’s Georgia Milestones results for our governing board. I present a report like this to our board each year, but on the heels of such a meaningful discussion in our AGP class, I was struck by the inordinate amount of attention being given to one measure of learning in my board report as compared to the lack of knowledge anyone outside of our AGP classroom would have of another measure of learning that was equally important.
I always caution anyone not to read too much or too little into scores on tests like the Georgia Milestones, but it is hard to avoid a tendency to use such scores to make quick judgments about the “success” (or not) of a school, a teacher, or a student. Scores are required by law to be used in teacher evaluations and student promotion decisions, and the local newspaper and many websites feature schools’ test scores for all to see, usually with little to no explanation of what was tested, how the tests are constructed, or other critical information necessary to understanding what the scores do or don’t tell you.
I know that capturing the learning from a discussion like the one in our AGP class the other day is messier and seemingly less “objective” than on a standardized test, but is it any less important? Are test scores the only measure of what matters at a school? Or do we want to know how students are developing as artists? Or whether they can research an essential question? Or if they can find multiple ways to tackle a complex task? Or how they tend to their physical and emotional well-being? As a principal and executive director at ANCS for the past 10 years, I have continuously tried to find ways to share out evidence of student growth and learning that isn’t captured on standardized tests because, ultimately, I believe and have seen that it’s a range of skills and knowledge—much of it not easily quantified by how many “right” answers were bubbled in—that will make the difference over students’ lives. It’s not always clear and it’s not always perfect, but I think it’s critical that we spend as much time talking about and analyzing work our students produce as thinkers and writers and artists as we do about how they fared on one test taken over a couple of hours once a year. We owe it to our students if we truly care about their intellectual, social-emotional, and physical development.