With three sons enrolled in a Manhattan public school, I am dismayed by the emphasis placed on standardized testing. Plenty has been written about why federal and state governments require such testing—and why Mayor Bloomberg has added his own battery of mandatory tests for children who attend the city’s public schools. Just as much has been said about whether such tests adequately measure academic progress. But I won’t add to the noise. In any case, testing is not a new thing.

What is new are the high stakes of these exams, which the city has begun to use to measure school performance under the Bush administration’s controversial No Child Left Behind law, and the way in which the academic year must consequently be organized around them.

No previous generation was subjected to such a barrage of exams. At least here in New York City, schoolchildren have to take one test after another, from the third grade through the eighth. (If they don’t excel at every step, there is summer school, and those who don’t make the cut at that juncture are held back for extra tutoring, or forced to repeat their current grade.) No wonder that according to Barbara Cavallo, a consultant recently quoted on the topic by the New York Times, “You have kids who just fall apart during the test; they just start crying or having a temper tantrum.”

Then there are the anxieties faced by underpaid teachers who routinely work six days a week (if not seven), and the principals who hover over them. Dedicated as these professionals might be, they constantly labor under the threat of having their school placed on what amounts to a blacklist if their students don’t measure up. Beyond that, because of No Child Left Behind legislation, they risk the loss of federal funds, and eventual shut-down, if the school does not improve.

Not surprisingly, school curricula across the city are constantly being revised in order to maximize test scores—and simultaneously denude them of the creativity and flexibility that children (and teachers) thrive on. As author Jonathan Kozol, who has been tracking the demise of American public schools for decades, recently observed, “As high-stakes testing takes on pathological and punitive dimensions, liberal education in our inner-city schools has been increasingly replaced by culturally barren and robotic methods of instruction.”

On the home front, parents increasingly find their weekend plans thwarted by test-prep classes, and their evenings tied up by the challenges of coaxing a child to relax (but still pull himself together) and not worry (but still do his best). No wonder that one educator I know suggests the whole ordeal is tantamount to child abuse.

I’m not complaining about my kids. With a roof over their heads and food on the table, they don’t need pity. They can get help when they need it, and a hug, or a break in the park near our apartment. Sometimes we leave the house whether they “have time” for it or not, simply in the interest of giving them some fresh air between homework assignments. In an age when recess seems to have been dismissed as a quaint, old-fashioned idea, they’d never get outdoors otherwise, except on the weekend.

But what about the kid who doesn’t have these things; whose mother has her hands full raising other, younger siblings (or works till 6 or 7 every night)? And what about the teacher who spends every Saturday in the classroom and never has time to recharge? Is it any surprise that in New York City alone, where teachers face enough hurdles as it is, quite apart from testing frenzy, some 7,000 teaching jobs are currently going begging?

According to a recent article in the Times, New York State will administer about 3.5 million tests this year, at a cost of about $6.5 million. As for the fallout on the children who are forced to pass them—sure, many adults are concerned. But they’re addressing the problem in some pretty bizarre ways. One is the use of the Test Anxiety Inventory, a 20-point yardstick for measuring test stress devised (you guessed it) by a professor of psychology. Another “helpful” product on the market comes from the Institute of HeartMath, which is selling a CD-ROM with “strategies for controlling test anxiety.”

It’s money for the experts, but it leaves parents like me steaming. I don’t have any grand solutions, but I’m sure of one thing: it’s time for to rename the legislation that’s driving a good part of this insanity. Because if things keep continuing the way they are, it won’t matter which child is left behind. There’ll be no child left alive.

cmz

---

Responses to this article can be sent to: