Hunting for Schooling Beyond the Bullets of Standardized Testing

I grew up in a hunting family.

Five rows, five guns in each, hung on our basement wall.

There were no locks or safeguards then,

Never loaded with bullets that were stored in separate places,

Just a family understanding of what’s right and what’s wrong

Passed along through generations.

I am often reminded of my days as a child, waiting in anticipation, shivering In a hide searching the sky for the flocks to fly by. At the end of these long days, it felt like a ceremonial gathering of the now deceased birds placed proudly on the hood of car, with a brief photo shoot followed by the dipping of carcasses in boiling oil, feathers now coupling among the lilac trees lining our backyard. Sunday afternoons were often trap shooting days, hunting and sporting practice with clay pigeons. The call of “pull” was followed by rounds of bullets. I remember how cool it was when I could pull the gadget that flung the clay birds in the air. After sixty years these memories flood back to me, proud moments when dad and brothers, Pat and John posted perfect scores.?

I’ve come to understand the art and science of hunting poses a striking parallel to the rapid fire of profuse testing in many schools today. Will we find that our over-tested students have not only been stripped of their distinct feathers, but will their bodies be too full of buckshot (test results) to fly? Will they have the capacity and endurance to make contributions to society after being the ‘targets’ of testing for, in some cases, thirteen or more years?

I think back to the looks of shock at the dinner table, if there was a clink on the plate. This meant that someone had bitten into a bullet in the body of the duck. You could hear a pin drop. At this point my dad and brothers would insist that the other had shot that particular duck. We all knew that hunting was about precision; the proper way to kill a bird was in the head – with one bullet.?

While schools are not literally killing students, it could be argued that the volume of standardized testing is wounding the spirit of what could be a much more invigorating, creative and industrious culture for teaching and learning. Just because we have the technological tools to gather as much data as infinitely possible, doesn’t mean we have to test children to death. How much data is required to understand that some students need more time to learn something, precious time abducted during unnecessary testing?

The over-engineering of placing data in percentiles or artificial quartile groupings, makes for all sorts of work for those who bathe in or worship the notion that success and learning can be reduced to number on a graph, dashboard or bar code. To be precise in education is to recognize the limitations of the data, not simply gather more of it, to forge a quicksand culture.

??????????? Standardized tests act like automatic weapons, separating curriculum from assessment, as if feedback in the context of learning doesn’t matter. We do not need to keep spraying our targets with testing bullets so scatter plots can rule the day. We can be precise and trust our professionals to gather the data they need, as they need it. There is no need for some Borg in a space, far away from the classroom, to make a ruling on the matter. Teachers, not testing companies, have the understandings to make these calls. They know how to focus attention on the minds of young people; they is no need to make such massive investments in testing. Schools can use such funding to reduce class sizes and give teachers more opportunities to help students learn, not prepare them for dodging bullets.

??????????? It seems the idea of owning an automatic weapon now and the need for more standardized testing has particularly drawn attention in the United States. One argument is grounded in freedom; however, grounds for testing lack any sense of freedom. How often can public schools or school systems opt out of standardized testing – in a DEMOCRATIC society?

??????????? My memories of family hunting were not stories of weapons with multiple rounds, with the goal of pulverizing prey. Rather, there was a reverence for precision - one shot, one duck, a code of honor of the day. We have a duty as professional educators to challenge not only the dangers of a society with access to AK-47’s , but we need to question the prolific use of assessment tools of mass distribution, that ultimately fill our student bellies with so many testing bullets, it killsl their spirit and desire to learn something beyond a test.

The people in the middle may say,

Let them have their guns that spray

The AK 47’s live another day

While testing keep pummeling away

Anyone can be a hunter now

A teacher and a tester, too

Sadly, without the wisdom of the powerless dissenting few.

? Just because we can make more testing bullets with more savvy technological testing tools doesn’t mean they have to be used on every child – as often as possible. The idea of testing students in each grade, every year is like saying it’s okay for anyone to own and use an automatic gun, weapons designed for war. An education should not be about identifying winners and losers in a battle to ‘race to the top’ of some artificial band of ?‘tier one’ schools. It’s about learning and engagement, with a code of honor that protects the rights and dignities of all.

Just as we may need to ban automatic weapons, we might think about the possibilities and positive opportunities that could emerge from the banning of standardized testing. One thing seems for sure, we do need to examine if ranking forms of testing can co-exist with school improvement. I think not.

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