School District Recognizes Teachers’ Concerns About Standardized Final Exams

This school year, the San Ramon Valley Unified School District plans to implement district-wide common assessments. All teachers in certain subject areas in middle and high school will be required to give these standardized tests as part of their final exams each semester.

The district originally intended to begin administration of the tests this fall, but the plan is being re-evaluated after several teachers voiced their strong opposition to this proposal at the SRVUSD Board of Education meeting on Sept. 20.

The speakers at the meeting included Darren Day, president of the San Ramon Valley Education Association, and  teachers Chad Geernaert (history), Kimberley Gilles (English), Brendan Nelson (English), Tracy Gilcrist (biology), James Bowling (history), and Nancy Glimme (history).

“I am not opposed to standards based assessment. I am opposed to excess,” Gilles said. “That is what I believe the move to common assessment is: excessive. If we are not careful, we will tip our district into factory-modeled, mass-produced mediocrity.”

In general the teachers are not completely opposed to standardized tests, but they identified numerous concerns with the proposed common assessments. They repeatedly emphasized their anxiety that the district was rushing this process.

“Teachers are concerned that the process is being put in place before the purpose is fully understood,” Day said.

“The fear is that there’s not enough time to get input and examination from those of us who will be implementing these tests,” Geernaert added.

They also questioned whether the tests would benefit students. Some said they were unclear about the district’s goals.

“I don’t think common assessments will help my students be better at anything they need as they grow into productive adults in the 21st century,” Gilcrist said.

Teachers worry common assessments will add to students’ stress about standardized testing, rather than advancing the learning process.

High school students are already taking the PSAT, the SAT, SAT subject tests, the pre-ACT, the ACT, AP exams, the mock-CAHSEE, the CAHSEE, and STAR tests, along with their regular school exams. Teachers wonder if this profusion of regulated tests is taking away students’ enjoyment of learning.

Monte Vista senior Samantha Scizak, who attended the board meeting as a representative of the Monte Vista High leadership class, said students’ reactions to the common assessments would depend on how they are administered.

“I think they [common assessments] are good if they’re implemented right,” Scizak said. “I think if the teachers were on board with it, the students would be more on board with it, too.”

Some teachers, such as history teachers James Bowling and James Rossi, said common assessments could be helpful to both teachers and students if they were used only as benchmark tools to evaluate and compare progress. But they do not agree with the district's requirement for teachers to count the scores as half of all student's final exam grades.

“Our department takes issue with that because it’s taking away teacher autonomy,” Rossi said.

Many teachers said the district is imposing common assessments on their classes without hearing their concerns.

“The way you are doing this makes us feel like you want to divide and conquer us,” Glimme said to the Board of Education. “I don’t feel respected  — I don’t feel like you want to hear what I have to say.”

The tests will be written by committees of teachers who were selected last year by the chairs of their departments. Melanie Harris, chair of the Monte Vista English department, said although many teachers did not support common assessments, they were willing to be on the committees because they wanted to have an influence on the test questions.

To prepare their students for the common assessments, teachers may have to rearrange or even rewrite lesson plans to conform to the standards.

“The fear is that we’re going to have to start teaching common curriculum,” Bowling said. “I came from a school like that. It was the most boring job I’ve ever had and almost took away my joy for teaching.”

Discrepancies in course material make it difficult to write district-wide tests, especially within a limited time frame. Beverly Davies, chair of the Monte Vista math department, said schools throughout the district are using at least five different textbooks for Algebra I classes alone.

“In general this [common assessment] is a good idea because we all should be teaching the same standards, but there are issues because the schools are all using different standards,” Davies said. “I do think that there’s a time crunch. It takes a long time to go through the process of developing a good, professional product.”

Some teachers have speculated that the move to common assessments is motivated by money, because complying with national standards increases schools’ chances of benefiting from President Obama’s Race to the Top program, which provides competitive grants to state education.

But Christine Williams, Assistant Superintendent for Educational Services of SRVUSD, said development of the assessments is not tied to Race to the Top and will not help the district receive funding.

“Gathering data from these test items would provide the opportunity for teachers at both the site level and teachers across schools, to have common information that would enrich their department conversations regarding their programs, the instructional strategies and materials they use, as well as how to analyze data and help all students be successful,” Williams said.

The Board of Education will hold a meeting of teachers and administrators in mid-October to discuss how the common assessments will be used and when they will be administered. The meeting will give teachers another chance to voice their concerns and have their questions addressed by the board.

English teacher Brendan Nelson said, “I am open to whatever future dialogues we as an educational community have about this really important issue.”