Standards and Testing: Obstacles for Elementary History Education

JoAnn Fox

Students in public school today, like those of the past, come from many different economic and ethnic backgrounds. Some are eager to learn and to know; some are puzzled and reluctant. Their abilities vary greatly, and so do their expectations of what school can do for them. But elementary education is not what it used to be.

Unlike the 1970s and 1980s, our classrooms today have students with significant physical disabilities and diagnosed learning problems. Current orthodoxy says that placing all children in the same classroom makes the best learning environment for every child. But the facilities for these children are as different as the children themselves. Some are the finest money can buy, and some are seriously deficient, lacking air conditioning for summer classes, new technology, or even the power outlets needed for it. Many classes are confined to spaces designed for far fewer students with simpler needs.

Whatever their backgrounds or circumstances, we now impose on all children high-stakes tests on state academic standards, tests all students must pass to go on to the next grade. Teachers are told to believe that these children can learn the “standards”—but to what degree? No allowance is made for unequal home environments, different previous educational experiences, or widely varied readiness to learn. Can all children really master the same subject matter and carry away with them the same skills? State testing on academic standards, our state legislators tell us, will make it happen. Holding teachers and students accountable will guarantee it, they say.

For Indiana’s fourth grade, however, there are 49 social studies standards, 58 language arts standards, 58 math standards, and 52 science standards—217 standards for the four academic subjects alone. All this in a school year of 180 days, with an average of six teaching hours each day. Even if teachers did nothing else, this means barely four hours of instruction per academic standard. Can twenty-five ten-year-old students with varying abilities be taught to “Identify important events and movements that changed life in Indiana in the twentieth century” (Standard 4.1.11) in four hours? And these standards are far from the only things teachers are required to present over the school year.

Given the consequences of test scores for children and schools, test-taking skills have become a demanding part of the curriculum. Teachers are expected to provide intensive and continuous instruction on such skills. And in addition to the mandated, highly publicized state standards, other things must be taught in our schools. AIDS education, drugs and tobacco education, and character education are among the federal programs we teach. State programs include health and hygiene as well as safety. And everyone thinks computer instruction, begun in the 1990s, is essential. Keyboarding skills begin as early as first grade. How much of the four hours for each tested academic standard is taken up by these areas of learning? Though today’s budget cuts in most states may lessen time for teaching art, music, and physical education, these stalwarts of elementary school can, and should be given at least three hours each week.

A few states test all four academic subjects, but many now test elementary students only in language and math. Given the costs of standardized tests and heavy pressures on states from the No Child Left Behind Act, more states will probably limit tests to those two subjects. Indiana’s exams for science and social studies are written and ready to administer each fall but the funding to do so has not been available. They are scheduled on paper, but no one knows when they will begin. Test scores are a critical new factor in the Indiana school system. If schools are not “passed,” they are relegated to probation until their scores rise from year to year, no matter what their original level or what changes occur in their student population. The results are organized by grade, school, and district and published in the media by grade, school, and district.

The result of this pressure on both the individual classroom teacher and the school is easy to predict. We teachers want answers to questions: Can this test truly reveal student mastery of the 217 fourth grade standards? Can it truly show which teachers are doing the best job conveying the 217 standards—and all the other mandated programs? Can test results honestly tell parents whether their school and its teachers are actually educating their children in all the areas of learning our society demands? Can test scores be expected to tell teachers what is working for each student in their classrooms?

What is happening to the atmosphere of the individual classroom? What is the individual teacher doing? Teachers with experience integrate the standards into their already developed curriculum. They carefully examine test questions and results and spend more time preparing their students for tests. They make tough decisions on how to use their limited instructional time, knowing that parents are more concerned with test scores than with the standards taught. For their principals, too, test scores seem to be the number one priority. Much time and many meetings are spent on areas where students scored poorly. What kinds of questions were missed? Who missed them? Why would they miss them?

Teachers are expected to teach all standards in every subject while administrators assure them that this can be accomplished. To see it done, many principals require teachers to list the standards in lesson plan books, in quarterly and semester reports, and in parent newsletters. Teachers must constantly search for time. Some alternate science and social studies by weeks or days. Some divide up the standards among weeks or quarters and go for “coverage.” Those weak in content knowledge teach only those subjects they know something about, or have materials about at hand. Publishers assure teachers that their textbooks cover all standards. If they teach every chapter, they will have taught every standard. One teacher using this method spent thirty minutes per chapter each day during the closing week, trying to make sure her students had at least read and heard something of each standard.

Textbooks present even further obstacles for social studies teachers. Publishers design books to be “simple” by emphasizing the visual experience over the textual. Students, as a result, develop very limited reading skills to get to the list of dates, people, and events that they need to know. Any important word is already highlighted. Main ideas are set in bold. Paragraphs start with a question quickly answered in the next two sentences. There are few details to explain main ideas, so a few minutes of rapid reading gets students quickly through a chapter. If asked to take notes, the students only have to copy down the bold face headings and the highlighted words under them. What is missing with this kind of instruction, however, is that students lack the oftentimes needed contextual knowledge that enables them to retain the information for longer periods of time.

What effect does all this have on history and social studies? Are students learning more because we have standards? Not when teachers have less time to think about and prepare effective social studies lessons. Due to the sheer number of topics, some important ones are never taught, or given so little time that students cannot retain them. Students get movie or video-clip versions of historic events. Knowledge is disjointed. Students and teachers lack the time to discuss ideas and work at projects, and administrators offer little help or incentive to improve teaching and learning social studies when the test is only on language arts and math.

Standards and testing are said to be the answer to all school problems, the new and certain way to improve public education. But simply mandating results will not produce results. Demanding only that teachers and students work harder at overloaded standards and test preparation will not bring the positive outcomes our legislators expect to see soon. Positive change will appear when we move to a higher phase of school reform, beyond the narrow focus on standards and testing, and give serious attention to how instruction is delivered and the conditions under which each child can learn best.

JoAnn Fox has been teaching for over twenty-five years, most of them in fourth grade at Cumberland Road Elementary School. Fox also teaches a social studies methods class at Ball State University and is active in Indiana’s National History Day program and sponsors a History Club for fourth graders at the Indiana Historical Society in Indianapolis.