Last spring, there was a buzz in the air about the potential for standardized tests being used in our state colleges as an assesment of our programs. Personally, I hate standardized tests–I took them countless times throughout my primary school days (it seems we were always lucky enough to have the military move us just after one state took the tests and just before the next state gave the test, so I often took the same test twice a year). I took the SAT and the ACT to get into college, the GRE to get into my MA program and again to get into my PhD program. Luckily, I’m not affected by any further standardized tests–yet. I didn’t freak out over the idea of assessment with our students for two reasons. First, I teach First Year Composition (and, this year, I’m specifically teaching Basic Writing) and by the time students have reached the time for these assessment tests, they will be closer to graduation and will have had a chance to improve their writing skills even more than what I can teach them in one semester or even a year. Second, assessment is not something that happens overnight. We would have time to prepare for the implementation of assessment tests. As of the beginning of this semester, I was not worried.

I’m worried now for multiple reasons. I want to start with the testing itself. A few weeks ago I, along with my FYC colleagues, received an email saying that ACT representatives would be administering the CAAP (Collegiate Assessment of Academic Proficiency) to all of our FYC classes. I paid no notice because, since I teach Basic Writing, my students would not be tested. Now, over the past few weeks I’ve heard the horror stories of teachers waiting for the officials to show up for the class, having to reschedule class plans and just be generally annoyed with the entire process. I said nothing. I’m not an advocate of standardized testing in college (or anywhere else, really), but these were not my issues. Yet today, I got an email that seemed just a little bit ludicrous. Apparently, the tests were not only given to FYC students, but also to our senior class. The senior class, it seems, rebelled. So the school’s response is not to just shrug their shoulders and go on, but to bribe students who did not take the test in their classes. By bribe, I really mean bribe. They are willing to pay these students (via a raffle) to take the test. It seems they promised ACT that a specific number of seniors would take the test and they have to meet that quota. So now the students they are attracting are not necessarily made up of a true sampling of our senior class, but will be made up partially of those who are seeking a “reward” for some kind of participation. It seems to me that this will, ultimately, throw off our sample pool.

The reason this worries me is that since our state is considering mandatory assessment. I have a strange feeling that these “experimental” tests are to help decide if this issue should become a law in the state. This means that instead of seeing what our school is doing, they are seeing how far students who need an extra few dollars in their pocket can be assessed. This sample in no way will reflect the student body graduating this year and, therefore, we run the risk of having to cater to the content of mandatory testing because a few people wanted to earn some extra money.

Still, I have not answered the overlying question of why I am against mandatory testing. Well, that all goes back to my teaching experience. I teach in a college where students not only must have specific SAT scores (1000 on the verbal and math) or a 21 composite ACT score. Truthfully, I would have just squeaked into the school as a Freshman. But that score is only valid if the student has also passed the state exit exam. I took an assessment test at the end of my junior year in high school and I did fine. But it was not a mandatory test at that time. Now, with the mandatory assessment, teachers focus too much energy on preparing students to pass the test and too little on teaching them what they need to know. When I was in high school, the test was poo-pooed as just an “experiment” so our teachers did not focus on the content of the test as the basis for our class syllabus. Now, however I spend the first few weeks of FYC teaching students that the 5-paragraph essay is not a form carved in stone–a concept they generally don’t comprehend until midterms. In addition, I have to teach them that a thesis statement does not have to specifically include the topic statement and the statement of the three topics in their essay. I have students in my class who didn’t score well enough on the state test to be placed into traditional FYC classes, but are brilliant writers. They’re in my class because they can’t write a 5 paragraph essay. Sure, I have students who can’t write a paragraph, but the majority of these students are working with problems traditionally addressed in our regular FYC classes. They feel that they are “bad” writers because they couldn’t write the 5 paragraph essay. What makes them “bad” writers–and this is not just the Basic Writing students, but a majority of our incoming freshmen, is that they don’t know what a topic sentence is and they can’t identify a thesis statement in any form other than the one they were taught to write in high school. They don’t know what plagiarism is and they can’t use any style manual to cite a reference. They don’t know these things because they weren’t emphasized in high school–they weren’t on the state test.

Now I swore that I would not make this post a “back in my day” rant, but I know that my high school English teacher would never have let us out of her class if we didn’t know the basics to writing. The basics, in her mind, included a full understanding of MLA, topic sentences, complex thesis statements, and 7-15 paragraph essays. There are times in class when I’m thinking that I’m teaching things in class that I would expect students to have learned in high school. I can’t be mad at them for not knowing this class, and, to some extent I can’t be mad at the teachers who are doing what they are told to do–prepare the students for the test. But I’m worried. What I’m worried about is that we’re going to be sending students into the real world with too much attention on what needs to be learned to pass an assessment test and not what they need to know in the real world. In other words, I’m worried that some day, somewhere, an accountant will be teaching a new secretary that they do not use the five-paragraph format in the real world.

That is my worry. And if we keep bribing students to take an “experimental test” I fear that is where we will be in the next decade. If that happens, I may hang up my PowerPoints and handouts and run for office. This state could use a former teacher as a governor. Why not me? I will be able to write more than the five paragraph essay.