Obsessing over the PACT
By Brad Warthen
Editorial Page Editor
YOSSARIAN and his friends hated the bomb line, because it would not move. The bomb line was the red ribbon on the map outside the intelligence tent, indicating the extent of the Allied advance. As long as the line remained below Bologna, they would still have to bomb Bologna, and they’d heard the flak there was horrific. Yet no matter how hard they stared at the bomb line, for hours on end, it would not move for them.
“I really can’t believe it,” Clevinger exclaimed to Yossarian in a voice rising and falling in protest and wonder. “It’s a complete reversion to primitive superstition. They’re confusing cause and effect. It makes as much sense as knocking on wood or crossing your fingers. They really believe that we wouldn’t have to fly that mission tomorrow if someone would only tiptoe up to the map in the middle of the night and move the bomb line over Bologna. Can you imagine? You and I must be the only rational ones left.”
That night, wrote Joseph Heller in Catch-22, “Yossarian knocked on wood, crossed his fingers, and tiptoed out of his tent to move the bomb line up over Bologna.” As a result, there was much celebration the next day, and the brass decided to give a medal to whoever had captured Bologna, if they could find him.
Only Bologna hadn’t been captured, and eventually they had to bomb it anyway.
Each year at about this time, when kids are getting out of school after weeks stressing over the PACT, I wonder whether we’ve become Yossarian, obsessing over the wrong thing.
The idea behind the bomb line was simply to indicate progress that would, or would not, be occurring regardless of whether the intelligence officer tacked a ribbon onto a map. The Palmetto Achievement Challenge Test was supposed to indicate progress that was, or was not, occurring in our schools.
All year, South Carolinians stare at that indicator, obsessing over it as though preparing for it, administering it, taking it, compiling the numbers, printing hundreds of thousands of report cards, sending them home with the kids and publishing charts would somehow achieve educational excellence in and of itself.
The final weeks of the school year are entirely taken up with the process. No more teaching; too busy testing.
I suspect that there are more than a few harried educators who, if they could, would love to be able to just sneak up and move a line on a map, so as to save the trouble. Many of them believe fervently that the whole process is ridiculous. Why not just let them teach, instead of going through this rigmarole? Just let them take Bologna — that’s hard enough — and let somebody else worry about lines on charts?
But it was easy to tell when Bologna was taken in 1945 — Americans in the streets, the Germans gone. Public education is more like Baghdad: Some on the ground see incremental progress, small steps against great odds. Those at a distance see nothing but failure, and demand benchmarks.
That’s where the PACT started, by the way — frustrated business leaders who believed in public education but saw it falling short for too many worked with “conservative” politicians who believed money was being wasted on the whole system.
The idea was a sound one: First, set standards of what we want kids to learn. Then, test whether schools are successfully teaching those things. To do that, you had to devise your own tests, because you had set your own standards.
The scores would be used to hold schools accountable for teaching the standards.
What we keep hearing is that they’re just “teaching the test.” If the test scores are nothing more than a red ribbon on a map, then “teaching the test” is a bad thing, an enormous waste of effort.
But if the test is truly based on the standards we want taught, then teaching the test means teaching the standards. And that’s what we want, isn’t it?
Several weeks back, I heard a child fretting about a test she would be taking in school the next day, and wanting to study for it, but not having a clear idea how.
When I heard the test was part of the PACT, I told her not to concern herself. Just relax, take the test. The hard work was behind her. Either she had learned all that stuff during the year up to that point, or she hadn’t. She wasn’t being tested; the school was. There was no grade. Something was being measured, that’s all — like dipping a thermometer into a river to check the temperature; there’s nothing the river could do about it one way or the other.
I’m not sure she believed me; what I said didn’t square with the anxiety that had been communicated to her at school.
That’s the trouble. The river knows it’s being measured, and has a huge stake in getting its temperature just right.
When I was a kid, any day we took standardized tests was a good day. Just color in the bubbles with a No. 2 pencil! It doesn’t affect your grade! Relax and do it!
And I did well on those tests (better than I did on the ones that counted, frankly). But the fate of my school didn’t depend on my score. The teacher didn’t care what percentile I fell into. She was just measuring the temperature; no sweat.
If Jim Rex can replace the PACT with something that is “no sweat,” more power to him. But I have my doubts. The stakes remain too high for the ones administering it, and they’re likely to stay that way. The political environment, from the state to the federal level, demands that schools account for themselves.
Still, if he can find a way to make the process less distracting while accomplishing the goals, that would be great. Spending the last few weeks of each school year fretting over the bomb line just isn’t healthy for anybody.
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It might be helpful for those readers without PACT age children to understand the process. For my eighth grade son who just completed our family’s final PACT “experience” (every year since its inception in 1999), PACT testing meant:
– No schoolwork for the week prior to the test
– Six days of testing in English, Math, Science, and Social Studies spread over two weeks (again, with no other schoolwork during that period so as not to “tire the children”)
When the results do come, the individual results will mean nothing. Students will be promoted despite scoring Below Basic on the supposed “standards”. Schools that have a large percentage of Below Basic students will see no change in staffing, curriculum. A bunch of statistics will be created. When a school finds a few percentage points gain in one category, there will be public pronouncements and award ceremonies. When a school drops a few percentage points, the test will be blamed and a bunch of educrats making big salaries will run off to analyze how to modify the tests to make the numbers look better.
Meanwhile, trained professional teachers – some with decades of classroom experience – will be forced to follow a strict training plan that cannot be deviated from. On more than one occasion with my three kids, we’ve heard of teachers who have said “I cannot go back over that material because we have to stay on schedule” even though the majority of the class may have failed a quiz.
PACT has done more harm than good to the educational process in South Carolina because it has traded valuable classroom time for testing without accountability.
It has stifled teachers and created an environment that is unnecessarily stressful. You want a good test of how our elementary and middle school students are doing? Ask the high school teachers whether they are seeing students who are better prepared for the H.S. curriculum. If the answer is not a resounding YES, then PACT has been a waste of time and precious educational dollars.
Good testing does not make good students. Good teachers (supported by competent principals and involved parents) make good students. There is no reason for a legislator to have any involvement in the educational process aside from trying to find the money to reward and attract the best teachers.
Talk about a catch-22, we are damned if we do or don’t use PACT. Take away the PACT and what do we have left for accountability, SAT scores and anectdotal evidence? On the other hand, Doug is right. The scores are used for little else than filling up pages with data so we can proclaim ourselves a data driven institution.
The underlying problem with education is how we determine success. Most parents are happy with a school if their kid gets good grades, with little regard for actual learning which they would have difficulty determining. Most administrators are happy if the Fs are minimized and students get their diploma – even if the grades need to be fudged. Most teachers are looking to make everyone happy by looking for ways to fudge these grades.
For example, a senior makes a 67 on a course he needs to graduate after making a 55 on the final exam. Clearly, he learned little in the class. The teacher has the student turn in a couple bonus assignments the last day of school. The 67 becomes a 69.5, a D. The kid gets to graduate. The parent is very grateful. The principal gives the teacher kudos for going the extra mile. The teacher is seen as a good teacher. The student gets out of high school with an 8th grade reading level, can’t compute a percent if he a calculator, and thinks Washington DC is a state out west somewhere.
Randy,
What surprises me is that more teachers are not forthcoming with questioning the system. I’m not sure they realize what power they have both from the aspect of being in a job where demand exceeds supply (in part due to below value salaries) as well as the inherent respect that teachers have generally. If hundreds of teachers came forward with their concerns over PACT, we’d see the legislators running for cover.
I have thought about the disempowerment of teachers and other educators for some time. I’ve participated in several school board elections plus one bond referendum.
I agree with RandyE, the very nature of a teacher’s job inhibits organizing. Working individually in rooms closed off from one another makes casual discussion difficult.
However, the very concept of teachers and educators organizing is feared, reviled and actively obstructed by numerous powerful groups. Educational managers (i.e. district administrations) must have nightmares about teachers developing any organizational muscle.
Cultural and political reactionaries obviously quake at the concept of an effective teacher’s organization. The hysteria about how the essentially toothless SC NEA chapter wields so much power and influence is just one barometer of the inchoate fear.
But, I’ve come to believe that teachers, as a whole, simply aren’t psychologically inclined to be activists.
This paves the way for keeping teachers unorganized and powerless in professional, political, and workplace issues.
Actually, if we do away with the PACT, it will be BECAUSE of teachers.
The one thing most politicians on the scene today — both parties, all shadings within each — seem to know about the PACT is that teachers tell them it’s awful.
Very few of the politicians understand what the test was for. For one thing, even though 1998 seems like last week to me, that’s so long before most current pols took office (and it’s amazing how little politicians know about what happened before they took office), that it might as well have happened during the reign of Marcus Aurelius. (You know; he was the daddy of that bad emperor in “Gladiator.”)
I have been a social studies educator for thirty years. Currently I am president -elect of the SC Council for the Social Studies (+1200 members.) Please let me say I am a Rex supporter. Thanks Brad for your comments in yesterday’s paper. I found it most ironic that you used a chapter or page from history to make a point. Dr. Rex’s proposal on accountability reform initially excluded social studies; i.e., testing would be each year in ELA and math (grades 3- 8) and one year for science in elem and one year for science in middle school. In Dr. Rex’s comments,The State, May 20, he does include social studies along with science. This would mean social studies testing would be in one grade in elem and one grade in middle. Even this concerns me. (Please see the most recent Time magazine article on the effectiveness of NCLB.) Anyway, the reality of accountability is that it follows funding or vice versa. If social studies and science are only tested one year at each level, instruction will be eliminated at the non-testing grade levels. This should motivate us all to oppose this aspect of the proposal. The civic achievement gap will be apparent as the children of South Carolina fall into the historically illiterate category. To borrow a phrase from M. Mead, “Children can not be held accountable for what we have not taught them.” Time magazine calls it a “narrowing of the curriculum.” Several state-wide organizations will meet at the Archives in Columbia, Wednesday, 9:00 for a Social Studies Summit. The purpose of the The Summit will be to develop an action plan to bring social studies accountability to Dr. Rex’s attention. I hope you can attend. Also, as for PACT social studies testing, it is done once a year for approximately 90 minutes (PACT is not timed)but it generally takes about 90 minutes. This is 90 minutes out of 180 days. Come on, this is not excessive. PACT takes 5 days to administer. Two days for ELA, one day for math. This spring as we sample tested, we had one day for science/social studies and one day for social studies, grade three as that test is read to students. Please understand this is 5 half days out of 180. Excessive? I think not. Several days are given for make up testing for those who were absent. Do we need accountability reform in SC? You bet we do but please do not do it at the expense of social studies and science! Our children deserve to be educated in history, geography, economics and government, which make up social studies instruction. Please join us, the SC Council for the Social Studies, in opposing Dr. Rex’s call to put social studies (and science)in the corner. Democracy and South Carolina children deserve better. While I breathe, I hope. Jane Eason
I have a question for any teachers out there:
How many students — especially in the earlier grades, maybe — simply don’t try on PACT? And how does that skew accountability of schools and teachers?
I’m just curious.
Ms. Eason,
The tests may take a half day, but I can tell you as a parent of three children who have gone through PACT, that no schoolwork is done in the week prior to PACT and the two weeks during PACT. I don’t have a problem with testing per se. I wouldn’t mind if they did all the testing in two days during the last week of school. Three 90 minute exams per day should be well within the capabilities of a student
by the time they reach middle school.
My issue is with PACT is with what happens after the tests are scored. What is your group’s position on what should happen with a student who scores Below Basic? and if a teacher has a majority of students who score Below Basic versus others in the same school who do not, what remediation should be take with the teacher? How do you allow teachers to be creative and innovative in the classroom when they are held to a strict schedule?
This from today’s rebuttal editorial on No Child Left Behind in USA Today:
“Indeed, according to a recent 50-state survey by Teachers Network, a non-profit education organization, exactly 3% of teachers think NCLB helps them to teach more effectively.”