Portrait of a Young Test Taker
Testing, from the inside out: The following sketch of a young test taker grew out of a conversation I had recently with a school employee.
She is six years old and in first grade. English is not her first language, Spanish is. But, she is lucky enough to go to a school in Minneapolis–a neighborhood public school–where she will be taught in Spanish for most of the day, until she is almost ready for middle school.
Image by artist Ricardo Levins Morales
When it is testing time at her school, though, she is tested only in English. And it is almost always testing time at her school, where many of the kids are poor, non-white, and non-native English speakers. The school has many homeless students, too.
In the fall, near the start of the school year, she took theMAP test, which is an optional, district-chosen reading and math test that is supposed to show “growth,” or how much a student’s MAP score changes during the course of a school year.
The MAP is only done online, and on her first day in the computer lab, she looked at the screen, where the reading test was cued up. In English.
There were paragraphs of text in front of her. She started to cry.
“I can’t read!”
No one could help her. The testing proctor is not allowed to read the text for her. Her classroom teacher is also not allowed to share any information with her about the test or how to take it.
She is six years old. She can’t read in English yet, or in Spanish.
The test proctor said, “Just do your best.”
The little girl gave up, and started clicking on answers, just to get through the test.
Her teacher will be evaluated on the girl’s test scores, even though the test is in English and the teacher and child work together in Spanish, as a way to ease bilingual children like her into later academic success.
In the spring, the child will take the MAP test in English again.
She also took another test just for English language learners during the winter, called theWIDA test. The WIDA test is a federally mandated test given to all ELL students–from Portrait of a Young Test Taker | Bright Light Small City:
