Test prep: ‘Feed the teacher, or he will eat the kids’
My first introduction to test prep was as a rookie teacher in 1992. Five educators with advanced degrees grew frustrated when analyzing a test question about what Alexander the Great founded on the Nile River. Did he build a library, a university or a museum? How in the world could we turn such distinctions into a meaningful learning experience?
From 1993 to 1994, my students’ test scores increased more than those of any other teacher in our history department. The biggest reason was that a student we can call “T” had scored a 1 percentile on the previous year’s test under a different teacher, but under me he had scored in the 99th percentile. Perhaps I was that much of a better teacher, or maybe I just needed to ask T why he improved so much. The previous year, T said, he was drunk when taking the test. This year, he was high on marijuana.
In the late 1990s, despite my misgivings, I tried to commit fully to the new End of Instruction (EOI) tests and turn the graduation exams into a constructive learning opportunity. I sought to teach in a holistic manner, without raising students’ stress levels or giving into teach-to-the-test philosophies.
The only enduring benefit of such an experience is that my files from that year are full of candid notes about the resulting classes. My notes are especially enlightening about the issue of testing and remediation for students without background knowledge.
History as more than multiple-choice
Our wonderful junior-level U.S. history class loved learning, but tempers flared as we approached the test. My students had low levels of basic skills, but they loved mastering college preparatory concepts. Students had not studied the American Revolution since 8th grade, so we reconstructed a series of time lines. Even with frequent repetition, few juniors could remember within a hundred years the dates of the War for Independence. During the last practice test — which also dealt with world geography — students were Test prep: 'Feed the teacher, or he will eat the kids' - NonDoc:
