What we lose when we focus on test scores

My daughter struggles with spelling and writing, and she doesn’t like to read much. At times, a little panic sets in. I start to conjure plans to remediate. I consider having her tested for dyslexia. Comparing her scores with her older sibling, I wonder: Was I less attentive to her? Did I fail to do as much enrichment?

And then I take a beat and remember that she was in kindergarten when a global pandemic hit.

More importantly, I remind myself that 10 points on a standardized test in one direction or the other are meaningless in the grand scheme of her life.

Because I came of age as a teacher during the era of “No Child Left Behind” — which was defined by testing mandates and increased scrutiny for meeting academic benchmarks — I’ve had a lot of practice talking myself off such ledges.

Part of that gig is learning to live with the feeling that you and your students are always failing — along with the feeling that, with just a little more grit on your part and theirs, it should be a breeze to overcome the effects of centuries of systemic inequality and racism.

If it sounds exhausting, it is.

For years, I was told that my instructional choices should be based on charts that purported to show whether or not my students were improving in reading, based on the results of standardized tests. I’ve sat in countless data review meetings trying to determine why my students did well on a question about “context clues” — figuring out what a word means based on the other words around it — while they did poorly on another requiring them to make predictions, for example.

If it sounds a little disconnected from actual, authentic learning, it is.

Teaching successes were tracked by administrators on a color-coded spreadsheet. At one point, I was a “dark blue” teacher on a report that supposedly indicated that my students were making better than expected progress on state tests.

With some distance, I can tell you that the dark blue mark had nothing to do with my school’s many meetings to review data from student test scores, nor the numerous, scripted reading intervention programs I’d been trained on. It was the result of a gifted school leader.

When Karren Dunkley became principal of my high school, Parkway Center City in Philadelphia, she looked around at the staff and students and told us, without any evidence that we could see, that we were the best of the best.

If Parkway cannot do it, then it cannot be done, she would say once or twice a day over the loudspeaker.

She looked at particular students and teachers once considered lazy or unmotivated and started telling them stories about their worth and value. And our community started trying to live up to her expectations.

Ms. So-and-So, who never stayed past 3:15, agreed to plan a grand talent show in her off hours. Student X, once known for suspensions and fights, would be found assisting the school secretary on back-to-school night, greeting parents like a game show host.

It was under her leadership that I came to understand that, especially in circumstances of “failure,” storytelling — what we say to and about each other — is incredibly potent.

What we say to and about each other is incredibly potent.

And that is why I am so concerned about the storytelling around the drop in test scores in math and reading among 13-year-olds that I am seeing all over the media. I’ve started to wonder: What do these scores even mean for kids? What life outcomes are they tied to, if any?

Well, it turns out that they are indeed tied to serious things like incarceration rates.

So it would not be in keeping with concerns about equity to dismiss them and tell the same “it’s meaningless in the grand scheme of things” story I tell myself about my daughter.

What is the value of the “sky is falling” narrative? I don’t know, but I assume there are profiteers working on that calculation as I sit and write. I assume that teachers, especially those in high-poverty districts, will return to school over the next few weeks and be presented with “new,” “evidence-based,” and screen-delivered programs that will claim to be able to magically fix a problem that requires a completely different set of solutions.

I won’t be at all surprised to hear about kids at schools with falling test scores missing art, music, science, and social studies so they can “catch up on their learning.”

» READ MORE: This Philadelphia teacher loves her job. So she quit. | Helen Ubiñas

Recently, the writer of a ProPublica article about falling test scores appeared on MSNBC and told the story of a mother who said her 18-year-old had given up on his dream of becoming an engineer because of how far behind he fell in math.

What kinds of messages are we sending to kids and families when we emphasize how learning loss leads to dead dreams?

I sure hope the child’s mother pushed back on her son’s hopelessness and found some remedial courses at the local community college, or enrolled him in some free online courses by any number of providers. He’s really not doomed.

I left the district last year. As much as I loved working with my students, I am too tired to even think about going back into the classroom while the sky is falling even more than it was falling before.

For all of my friends and colleagues who are still in it, I wish them school leaders who tell stories about clear skies and the untapped promise of themselves and of their students. I wish them fun talent shows and reading and math remediation that is put in its proper context. I wish them fully staffed counseling departments to support the mental health needs that are most definitely at the root of some of the drop in test scores. I wish them temperature-regulated, asbestos-free classrooms, sporting events that don’t get canceled due to threats of gun violence, stable administrations, and manageable class sizes that allow students to get extra attention from the teachers who know them best.

The good news is this national report card panic will pass just as my own panic about my daughter did. And teachers and schools will go back to doing what they do — meeting kids where they are.

Maureen Boland is the host of “The Mighty Writers Podcast.” She used to teach high school English.