The Baseline Tests

Here is a concept. At the very beginning of the year, we should test the students in each and every subject they take. Language arts gives reading and grammar tests, math gives grade level math tests, and social studies gives tests on their subject matter, etc. The scores that the students receive will represent a baseline; it’s made up solely of any prior knowledge they have, or lucky guesses they have made. Then, periodically, ideally at the beginning of every grading period, we give them either the same test or an exam that tests the same concepts, so that we could track their learning progress. Presumably, they should all score very low at the beginning of the year, and their scores should improve as the year progresses. The teacher can even gauge which specific topics are giving the students trouble, and so emphasize their teaching with the aim of addressing those specific deficiencies. By the end of the year, once the students have learned the material and have been studying it for 180 days, the scores should all be significantly higher. Of course if they are not higher, then obviously that teacher is ineffective and should be replaced.

I would agree with the above paragraph too, as an intelligent, logical human being. However, as a teacher, I find that this does not work, for several reasons. I would like to go over some of them in detail.

Principally, students react very negatively to baseline tests. A teacher I know who teaches the ESE classes at my school told me that for the first two weeks of school she had kept her classes pretty well behaved. The day she had scheduled to give the baseline test, just at the mere mention of it, she immediately had severe discipline issues in her classroom, and had to make several parent phone calls. The students resent taking a test that is designed for them to fail. The result is that even when given the assessment, a majority of students do not even bother to read the questions and so bubble in answers randomly. Only the most dedicated and achievement driven of students (I estimate about 20%) bother with the test at all.

Because of this phenomenon, it leads to skewed results. We take these tests, we analyze the scores, we convert the data into bar graphs and charts, that are meant to show the strengths and weaknesses of each student per standard or benchmark that the test was assessing. Of course, because the majority of students just randomly guessed, the data is all meaningless. It’s not showing us strengths and weaknesses at all, but just random information that is of no use to drive instruction (which was the stated purpose).

As you are reading this, you may already have also realized that the whole initial test is somewhat pointless as well. The students have never taken the class, hence they shouldn’t know anything. If I have never studied world history, obviously I don’t know anything about it. If I have never taken algebra, then obviously I will fail an Algebra test. What are we really gaining by giving students these tests? In the end, the test only confirms what we already knew; the students at the beginning of the year don’t know anything. By giving them a test that they will fail, more harm is done than good by causing them to feel inadequate. I remember one year I gave this baseline test in Civics, and I had one girl who scored a forty two percent, the highest score in the class. I told her enthusiastically, “hey, guess what, you scored a forty two!” I was trying to compliment her. She said in response, “Yeah, I have always been bad at social studies.” The fact that it was the highest score in the class didn’t matter to her. In fact, a forty two percent is a failing grade, which just confirmed her mistaken notion that she was bad at the subject.

Another interesting thing happens at the end of the year. Despite what common sense might dictate, at the end of the year scores tend not to increase by that much. Of course, there are exceptions to this. In math courses, where the material is skill based, scores do tend to rise more that the average in other courses. In language arts, because many high level students are already proficient in reading, scores tend to plateau or in many cases go down. In social studies, my personal experience is an increase of ten to twenty percent on average. Social studies is not skill based, instead it is content based. Mostly it’s information that must be learned and memorized. Some students who are genuinely interested in the subject make large gains. Most students, who couldn’t care less what Congress does or what contributions the Sumerians made to posterity, gain very little at all from social studies.

Also, the frequent amount of testing takes time away from teaching. Sometimes it takes up to two days of class time to administer these tests. If given four times a year, that’s already eight days of class time lost. Also, these tests are supposed to be followed up by “data chats”, where we sit down with each individual student and talk about their results, and how they can improve. The notion that any teacher who has 120 students on average can sit down with each and every one of them four times a year is ridiculous. Second, halfway through a course, the students have only been exposed to half the curriculum, so what can you possibly say during these data chats. “Well, you did very poorly on the economics section of the test, but of course we don’t learn that until the fourth nine weeks. Also, you did very poorly on the Law section of the test, but, again, we learn that in the third nine weeks.” As a student, how are you supposed to even answer to this, or feel about this?

The most criminal thing of all is that there is an attempt to tie teacher evaluations and even salaries to these baseline tests. Besides the fact that not all teachers teach the same level students (some teach gifted, some teach honors, some teach regular, and some teach learning deficient students) and the other reasons mentioned, nobody should be evaluated on somebody else’s performance. There are lazy students, there are students who refuse to do homework, there are students who refuse to read the book, there are students who are frequently absent from school, there are students who don’t take the exams seriously. There are too many factors outside of the teacher’s control that also determine scores on these tests.

I understand the need to evaluate teachers, to find effective teachers and root out the bad ones, but teachers should be evaluated based on things they have full control over. More on that in a separate post.