Testing Season

Teaching Tolerance ran The ABCs - The Anti-Bias Classroom Series - from 2006 to 2008. The ABCs were online curriculum packages for educators and each installment of The ABCs offered classroom activities and professional development resources for teachers at all grade levels. From women’s history to service learning to hip hop, each thematic unit allowed for educators to “click, print and use” materials immediately.

The ABCs gave Jeff the opportunity to co-write with some of the most prominent scholars in the field of multicultural education, scholars like Bill Bigelow and Linda Christensen of Rethinking Schools Magazine, Carl Grant of the University of Wisconsin, Madison, Jacqueline Jordan Irvine of Emory University, Christine Sleeter of California State University, Monterey Bay, and Paul Gorski of EdChange.org. These scholars have contributed to the classic works that multicultural educators use to teach and cite as core pieces of literature in research.

Introduction

In many communities, springtime marks not just the blossoming of flowers or the melting of snow, but also the incursion of testing season in schools. This time of year, multicultural educators often cringe at the idea that students’ knowledge can be measured, much less honored, by fill-in-the-bubble tests.

Yes, tests - lots of them, thanks to the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) - are a reality it today’s public schools. So what, then, is a progressive educator to do?

Take heart. If you struggle to balance testing with students’ broader educational needs, you’re not alone. Kelley Dawson Salas shares how her “school in need of improvement” came to terms with testing, while Jeff Sapp reminds us that teaching sometimes is a subversive act.

Teach about the tests. Linda Christensen provides a 3-part-lesson to encourage students to critique testing and help educators connect test prep to issues youths care about. Plus, Bill Bigelow offers a role play about testing’s history.

Equalize testing environments. Subtle changes in test situations can improve standardized testing scores among students of color and girls.

Think (and act) long-term. As public support for testing shifts, opportunities to enrich measures of performance emerge.

Many individuals made this edition of the ABCs (Anti-Bias Classroom) possible: Yelena Akopyan, Joshua Aronson, Bill Bigelow, Linda Christensen, Tafeni English, Camille Jackson, Tiffany Rogers, Kelley Dawson Salas, Jeff Sapp, Rhonda Thomason, Mike Trokan and Victoria Williams. Teaching Tolerance extends special thanks to Rethinking Schools and its editors for allowing us to reprint select materials.