When Anxiety Over Takes a Test
Guest Blog by a member of the OEA/Eastern Local CTA | The actual name has been withheld to protect the identity of the student.
I recently read the article in the February edition of “Ohio Schools” and it brought to mind not one of my students but that of my own son’s testing anxiety when he was in the 6th grade.
“…what his teacher who was proctoring the test told me left me heartbroken for him.”
It was the first year the Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers (PARCC) was given.
My son is an excellent student who is high achiever, so I can’t put all the blame on the test or even his teachers. I do know that he verbally and physically showed signs of severe stress in the weeks up to taking the tests that spring, which is a good sign that he valued the importance of it, but what his teacher who was proctoring the test told me left me heartbroken for him. She said that at the end of one test session he was so overcome with anxiety that he started stabbing himself in the forearm with his own pencil.
Upon hearing this, I had a long talk with him about the importance of standardized testing for students at his grade level. I told him that the only one’s held accountable for the scores were his teachers and his district.
He’s now a freshman in high school who has already taken the ACT, has straight A’s, and will be dual-enrolled in classes at a local university next year through College Credit Plus. He still has anxiety about testing, but at least knows that he will be held accountable for his performance to not only graduate but eventually earn a degree. | #OverTestedOH #RedForEd
The author is an English Language Arts educator and a member of Eastern Local CTA
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Silent Tears
#OvertestedOH #RedForEd
OEA Guest Blog | By Tina Allen, ColumbusEA/OEA
I am a fourth-grade teacher in Columbus City Schools.
One of the most devastating and heartbreaking days of my teaching occurred when one day, unexpectedly, one of my students silently put her head down on her desk. Upset with her score on a state-mandated middle-of-the-year test, she began to cry.
She had begun the new school year on the heels of attending summer school because she was unsuccessful in passing the high-stakes Third-Grade Reading Guarantee the year before.
Traumatized By Testing
She had been traumatized by testing. I had seen that expression before. I’ve discussed it with other educators as well as have seen it in other students equally traumatized by the testing process.
As the tears ran down her face, I was speechless and felt disgusted inside.
“I joined this profession to change lives, to educate, motivate and inspire. High-stakes testing almost took that away from me”
Had Testing Traumatized Me Too?
“What had I done?” I asked of myself.
Recognizing she had at least two more standardized tests on the horizon as well as I-Ready assessments, reading assessments, and progress monitoring, I then asked myself, “How can I help her through this? “
It made me realize that unknowingly, I, too, had been traumatized. I was becoming to concerned about “what they needed to know to pass the test” versus “what are they are learning.” Yes, I am advocating for a reduction in high-stakes testing and the creation of alternative pathways for promoting students onward to the next grade.
I joined this profession to change lives, to educate, motivate and inspire. High-stakes testing almost took that away from me.
The tears of a fourth grader reminded me what’s important.
Tina Allen is a member of the ColumbusEA/OEA and a fourth-grade educator at Columbus Cassady Elementary School
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Our Stories — #OvertestedOH #RedForEd
Guest Blog | By Courtney Johnson, ColumbusEA
I am a high school English teacher turned school librarian at Columbus Fort Hayes Arts and Academic High School. Literacy is my life’s work. I’m a National Board-Certified English teacher with a reading endorsement and a Master’s in Library Science.
I spend my days working with students and teachers, helping them find books, conduct research, and write essays. I help run a free school store in the library’s auxiliary space for students in need.
During the fall 2018-19 administration of state-mandated tests, I spent three weeks — 15 instructional days — away from the job that I love. Instead, I administered nearly 900 end-of-course test retakes. This meant that for three weeks our students did not have access to the resources of the school library or librarian.
“…I love my Job! Yet, I felt complicit in a crime.”
DIFFICULT THREE WEEKS FOR EVERYONE
Unfortunately, I was not the only one negatively impacted during those three weeks.
These assessments also tied up our two school counselors, who should be able to spend their days supporting students in crisis and helping them plan for their futures. Educators across our school were pulled away from instructional time to help meet the need for test administrators.
Intervention Specialists, who are required to serve all students with an Individual Education Plan (IEP), lost a combined 22 hours of traditional instruction time in providing necessary extended-time and small-groupings for students, some needing to retake all seven tests.
We all lost no less than three weeks of valuable instructional time.
AN EMPTY SEAT
Shakespeare once wrote, “Grief fills up the room of my absent child.” We all suffer when students are absent from classes. During this three-week period, that grief took on many forms.
One Senior tried coming to school late to avoid the test, and then refused to leave her English class. Our school safety officer was able to convince her to come to the library to take the test. She wasn’t alone.
- Students enrolled in our carpentry program refused to miss their morning trade classes to take the state-mandated tests. (One student told me he has been working with his dad as a carpenter since he was 10. He believes he will never pass the state-mandated tests, and why does he need to? He has straight A’s in carpentry class, and a solid plan for his future.)
- Another anxious student went home vomiting.
- A student who lost her home overnight begged not to take the test. She just couldn’t handle it. We couldn’t make her.
- Another student confided in me that he used drugs and alcohol to de-stress from the anxiety caused by the test.
Day after day, I watched as Seniors dragged themselves to our school library for the tests. Our library is a place normally vibrant and alive — just ask any of the 270 student participants of my school’s book club. However, as a designated testing area, the library had become a place filled sleepy-eyed students with defeated spirits. I would hug them, and say, “You’re almost finished. Hang in there.” I did the only thing I knew to do: be kind.
“It is wrong to subject young people to this much testing…. I called my union.”
Yet, I felt complicit in a crime. I knew I needed to stand up for them. So, I called my union.
OEA CONVENING ON OVER-TESTING
My local president, John Coneglio, and OEA Vice President Scott DiMauro, listened to my concerns, and we went to work to fight back against this over-testing of students.
The first outcome was the Convening on Over-Testing, January 26, 2019, in Columbus. More than 80 educators from across the state convened to examine further the issue. We began by asking participants to talk about why they came and to record their feelings about testing as they discussed with one another. We collected these words to create the image below.
Federal minimum testing guidelines require only one English, one math, and one science assessment during high school. In Ohio, we ask high school students to take more than double that amount, and we attach high stakes to them – for our students and our schools.
These tests are at the heart of so many education policies in Ohio from the State Report Card to HB 70 (the State Takeover Bill) to Value-Added teacher evaluations. We do not have to do this to children. Only 11 states in our nation continue to subject students to high stakes testing.
I don’t know a single educator who isn’t feeling frustrated, overwhelmed, or heartbroken by this soul-crushing, over-testing of students.
A colleague of mine described our state of standardized testing as feeling like “both prisoner and warden.” Educators feel hopeless, and yet we must do all we can to get kids through a faulty measure, or else our value-added scores determine that we need the state to take over our schools.
Even the written answers are scored by computers. There is no humanity left in this policy. Kids are reduced to numbers on a spreadsheet.
SHARING OUR STORIES
We all have stories to tell about the effects of high stakes standardized testing on our students, their families, and our schools – stories like I mentioned above, and stories like these we heard on Saturday:
- An Intervention Specialist has to tell parents that their children with Multiple Disabilities are not on track to pass the Third Grade Reading Guarantee (3GRG).
- A second-grade teacher’s student hid under a desk and cried rather than take the MAP test.
- A high school career education teacher said, “I want my kids to be smarter than the robots they’ll work alongside of and preparing them to take tests is not how we do that.”
- A middle-school gifted-cohort teacher’s high-achieving students asked why their hands-on projects had to be interrupted to take a practice test.
And my own family’s story: my son, Brady, was in the first group of students under the 3GRG law. Literacy is my life’s work. I read to my son every day of his life. He had high-quality preschool. Our home is a literacy-rich environment. He loved books and stories. And then the 3GRG made his first-grade teacher hyper-focus on his reading level, and it made him HATE reading. He entered into an endless cycle of test and remediate. This vicious cycle continues to happen across our state.
WE ARE TESTING LESS TEACHING AND LEARNING
At this point, I wonder what are we even testing? With more testing comes LESS teaching and LESS learning. We need time to teach, and our students need time to learn. They do not deserve this toxic testing environment that our state legislators have created.
In 2011, I became a union activist. When the Governor and our state legislature attacked our collective bargaining rights, we found a way to say, “This is wrong. Let me tell you why.” We need to find our voices again.
Here is where you can help. Write your story. Ask your students to write their stories. Ask families you know to write their stories.
TIME TO TEACH, TIME TO LEARN
We need time to teach, and our students need time to learn. It is time our state legislators — the folks with the power to change these laws — hear our stories. Our voices must be louder than the testing lobby. Here’s how:
#OverTestedOH | #RedForEd — Call To Action
- Invite legislators to your school as well as events
- Attend an upcoming OEA Educator Lobby Day to share your story
- Send your story to your state legislators and to Governor DeWine
- Ask your local school board to pass the Time to Teach, Time to Learn resolution
- Click here for a sample resolution (Please check back Tues. Feb 12th)
- Share your insights in the comments section of OEA’s Voices of Change blog
- Submit your story as a formal OEA blog (300-500 words) entry to: webmaster@ohea.org
- When posting to social media use the hashtags #OverTestedOH & #RedForEd
Courtney Johnson is a member of the @ColumbusEA/OEA, and an English teacher turned school librarian at Fort Hayes Arts & Academic High School.
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Power and Potential of Our Stories
By Julie Holderbaum, Minerva EA/OEA
A teacher walks into a bar.
No, this is not the beginning of a joke, or the beginning of a commentary on the challenges of public education driving teachers to drink (well, not really).
It’s the beginning of a testing story.
I was the teacher, and it was a holiday weekend in my small town a few years ago.
I felt a bit like Norm on Cheers when I walked in. “Miss Moffett!” the kids nearest the door yelled. (I hadn’t been Miss Moffett for years, but just as these young adults would always be “kids” to me, I would always be Miss Moffett to them).
There were hugs and smiles, and a few offered to buy me a beer. As we caught up, the conversation turned to the days when they had been students in my class. They had lots of good memories.
(Fill in the upcoming blanks with fun and meaningful, but time-consuming activities).
“Do you remember when we ______?”
“Do you still do that activity where we _______?”
“Do you still teach _________?”
My answer was always, and sadly, that I don’t do any of those activities anymore. Why? Because I have slowly but surely allowed testing to dictate what and how I teach.
The lessons I teach now are not what I enjoy teaching and they are not what their kids enjoy learning and frankly, it makes me sick.
My former students were happy to see their old teacher Miss Moffett. But I’m afraid that now, if they see their children’s teacher Mrs. Holderbaum out at a bar, instead of offering to buy me a beer, they might throw one in my face.
The lessons I teach now are not what I enjoy teaching and they are not what their kids enjoy learning and frankly, it makes me sick.
And I’m Not Alone
On January 26, 2019, over 100 Ohio public school teachers met to share stories about how testing has impacted our classrooms.
There were stories of kids of all ages puking and crying on test days.
There were stories of teachers basically “bird-boxing” as they helped students with technical issues during an AIR test, so great was the fear of breaking security protocol by looking at the actual test. There were stories of teachers considering leaving the profession because of the pressure of these high-stakes tests, and stories of teachers telling their own children that they would not pay for their college education if they went into teaching.
In one activity, we listed words that expressed our feelings regarding the overabundance of testing and what it has done to our students and to us. Want to hear a few just from the six people at my table? Sad. Anxious. Angry. Overwhelmed. Exhausted. Defeated.
Is that how we want to feel about our jobs? Is that how we want our students to feel about school?
We Have Two Choices
Of course not. We have two choices. Keep feeling that way while we continue to adapt to testing madness, or start pushing back and standing up for ourselves, our profession, and our students, and saying ENOUGH.
I’ve written about testing several times previously. After that encounter at the bar, I wrote an open letter to my former students apologizing in advance for the experience their kids would have in my classroom now that testing has taken over. I’ve written about the irrelevant and inappropriate test questions and the challenge of preparing my students to address those questions, and last spring,
I wrote about the absolutely insane fact that computers, not people, are now grading our children’s essay answers on the test. These pieces share my stories and voice my feelings about the impact of testing on my classroom.
But we need more voices. We need a chorus of voices so loud that we cannot be ignored. We need YOUR voice.
Share your story with other teachers; send your story to OEA at webmaster@ohea.org to add to the discussion of how real teachers and students are being adversely affected by testing insanity.
There is power in sharing our stories with each other; anyone who attended the meeting last weekend can attest to that. But that power turns into potential to change the situation when we share our stories with those outside the profession. We need to saturate the internet and bombard our legislators with our stories. We need our communities and our leaders to know that we will no longer be complicit by silently going along with the changes in education that are hurtful to our students.
Power of Social Media
Write your stories, and share them on your social media platforms, using the hashtags #OvertestedOH and #RedForEd.
Power of Legislative Contact
Then, write to your legislators, or better yet, visit them in Columbus or lobby them when they are at home in-district. Let them know how you feel, tell them how the testing affects your students; share your stories.
We need our legislators to hear our chorus of voices. We need them to hear what it’s like to have our careers and our classrooms commandeered by the demands and pressure of the tests. We need them to hear that Ohio’s children, instead of feeling excitement at the idea of going to school, are feeling dread. We need them to hear that because of the tests, we are developing anxiety in our students instead of curiosity, fear of failure instead of freedom to flourish.
Don’t be afraid of reaching out to your legislators because you don’t consider yourself a political person.
We are turning out test-takers instead of lifelong learners. Instead of being trusted as college-educated professionals who can factor in our students’ varying situations, challenges, strengths, and growth to determine whether or not they have succeeded at a level needed to pass our classes, we are being treated as assembly-line workers who must produce a uniform product that meets the same standards as every other product in the factory in the exact same way. This system might work well when producing products, but it’s no way to produce people.
But I am Not Political….
Don’t be afraid of reaching out to your legislators because you don’t consider yourself a political person. This is not a political issue. Children of both Republicans and Democrats are negatively affected by the over-testing in Ohio.
Ohio is one of only 11 states in the nation to require more tests of our children than the federal government mandates; it is our state legislators who have the power to change that.
And it is Ohio’s teachers who have the power to influence them to do so with our stories.
— Julie Holderbaum is an English Instructor and an Academic Challenge Advisor at Minerva High School, Minerva, Ohio.
Related Resource Links
- OEA 2019 Educator Lobby Days
- Find Your Ohio Legislators
- OEA Legislative Scorecard
- 08.16.2016 — A Teacher’s Open Letter to Ohio’s New State Superintendent
- 08.09.2016 —The 8 Olympic Events of Teaching
- 04.25.2016 — To All the Ones I’ve Taught Before
- 04.13.2015 — What to do about too much testing — Fight, Flee, or Fake It?
- 02.29.2016 — Who Really Deserves the F?
- 01.19.2016 — Tests With More Questions Than Answers
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The School Report Card Sham
By Kevin Griffin of the @DublinEA/OEA
The state report cards have been around for several years. Their erroneous grades and convoluted metrics have been so well documented, that educationally, they are about as relevant as Kardashian reruns. It’s unfortunate that districts now need to deal with the annual damage control when they are released.
The real victims are our students.
It’s important for us to remember why these report cards were conceived. It was, quite simply, to make us look bad. The corporate reformers, with help from ALEC, created standardized testing, value-added, and then the report cards, as a way to convince the public their schools were failing. The public didn’t buy it.
But don’t count on the vultures to fly away when there’s money to be made. Despite the fact the legislature knows the report cards are full of problems and half-truths, they are still being used to shut districts down, a thought inconceivable not too long ago.
“But don’t count on the vultures to fly away when there’s money to be made.”
HB 70 uses the report card data to dismantle the school board and replace administrators with a CEO who can basically do whatever he wants. Youngstown and Lorain Schools have already been taken over, East Cleveland is in the process, and Dayton Schools is next in line. The slow, but steady process to turn every school in these areas into a charter school has begun.
The real victims are our students. The one thing the report card does show is an undeniable link between test scores and poverty. In fact, Ohio’s lowest performing districts, those with a performance score under 70, have eight times the number of low-income students as districts with a performance score of 100.
So now these students, the ones who need more support, stability, and love than all the others, will be transported to for-profit charter schools. And we all know how well that works out.
Kevin Griffin is a member of the @DublinEA and the Central OEA Vice President
This post originally appeared in the in Winter 2019 issue of the Communique, a publication of the Central OEA/NEA
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