Failing the test

By Jerome Christenson

Winona Daily News

The sky isn’t falling.

Our children aren’t slack-jawed sub-literates, our schools aren’t fluff-factories staffed by money-grubbing careerists, our future is not about to be seized by hordes of Third World Einsteins bent on reducing us to burger-flipping Wal-Mart shoppers.

No matter what some folks claim the test scores say.

It’s time for the great annual wailing and gnashing of teeth engendered by the release of the results of the Minnesota Comprehensive Assessment tests in math and reading – and the resulting judgment levied on each and every Minnesota public school as to its success in making Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP) based on standards laid down in Washington by folks who’ve never met your child, your child’s teacher or visited your child’s school.

Let me venture the humble opinion that, as far as any individual child’s future is concerned – and ought it not be the future of the individual child that concerns us – those numbers are less important than the average number of peas put on his lunch tray on test day. The kid didn’t have to swallow the peas –we don’t have to swallow the assumptions behind those numbers.

Let’s for a minute remember what that data is based upon … a lot of kids sitting down and spitting back random tidbits of information tucked away in their little punkin-heads – the kid with the most tids wins – and so does her school.

Now, just to get this far in writing this little essay I’ve checked the spelling and definition of the word “engendered” in my desk dictionary, emailed the communications director at the Minnesota Department of Education to find out what MCA-II stands for (Minnesota Comprehensive Assessment – but they leave that tidbit off their website), and looked up a story I’d reported five years ago just to be sure I remembered it right. Had I sat down to a test made up of those three items I would have scored 66 percent – probably not enough to be considered Adequate Yearly Progress by the state, certainly not enough to be considered Adequate Daily Accuracy by my editor.

The fact is, unless you’re lucky enough to be chosen to appear on Jeopardy, taking quizzes is just not a particularly important lifetime skill.

And isn’t it really lifetimes we’re talking about here? During the Watergate hearings, the question put to the nation was “what did the president know and when?” That’s the same question we’re putting to our kids, but what was critical in discerning guilt for the commission of “high crimes and misdemeanors,” the most these test scores can tell us is that little Billy hasn’t learned all there is to know about compound fractions – yet. And figure, if the test was on Monday and the lesson on compound fractions was scheduled for Wednesday, what’s the big deal if Billy doesn’t know the answer – yet? Do we really have to fire his teacher, bulldoze his school and consign him to a lifetime of plucking for Gold’n Plump?

And before we join the hyperventilating over “rigor” and “standards” and “preparation for life in the global economy” it might be appropriate to let a bit of reality intervene. I’d offer that I am now approaching the 40^th anniversary of my last attempt at solving a quadratic equation – a feat that was, at one time, seemingly critical to my life. In fact, I spent three years of my youth studying algebra, geometry and other kinds of elevated mathematics – knowledge of which has proven as valuable in my day-to-day life as an understanding of the chemical composition of the earth’s core. However, each and every April since I was no more than 15 I’ve been confronted with Form 1040 or a derivative, but never in my high school career was so much as a class hour devoted to depreciation schedules or amortization tables.

So much for rigorous preparation for life.

Life is long. Despite the impression given by educrats and helicopter parents, life doesn’t end with the senior class trip nor is resurrection ordained in a college admissions office. Each day, each hour presents new chances, new opportunities, new challenges. There is a rhetorical nod given to “lifetime learning” whenever there is a grant to be written or a referendum pursued, but all the fussing about which answer sheet ovals were blackened on a given day gives the appearance that each of our brains is locked up and sealed about eight weeks prior to the end of 11^th grade – forever after to be baffled by whatever may be new, different and novel.

Not so.

Celia Werner passed away a few days ago. She was 107 years old. At 101 she was at the Winona Senior Center, emailing friends and acquaintances, exchanging digital photos with family. She didn’t have the opportunity to master the personal computer until she was well into her eighth decade simply because there were no PCs to master before she was in her eighth decade. “If you've got your mind, you can be 150 and still learn,” she said, when she was well on her way to proving it.

There’s no way to tell if Celia’s class would have scored well on the MCA-II; no way to tell if her school made Adequate Yearly Progress. In the course of 107 years, it didn’t matter. It still doesn’t. What the kids don’t learn today, they can learn tomorrow – or whenever it becomes important enough to need to know. Life is more than a quiz bowl and that’s what our kids need to be prepared for. Life is long and the only test worth worrying about comes at the end of it. Let’s see to it they all pass.