Teachers weigh in on testing probe

The head of the Sisters teachers union was pleased with Nancy Brown’s investigation into the apparently improper use of a reference book in the administration of statewide third-grade math tests.

“I thought she did a very fair and thorough job, interviewing many employees, not just the teachers involved,” Kelly Powell told The Nugget Monday. “She came to conclusions that will help us in the future and brought out the fact that this was an honest mistake, that people were teaching the way they thought best to meet the needs of the kids and didn’t really second-guess the use of the book because it’s such an integral part of the math program.”

Powell was one of four teachers who let their students use the “Everyday Mathematics Student Reference Book” during statewide assessment tests in one or more of the past three years. All four had maintained public silence before Brown’s report was issued (see The Nugget, page 1, March 22, 2006).

Powell and fellow teacher David Hewett agreed to interviews in the past week. A third teacher, Lori Small, was not available (these are spring break weeks for Sisters schools) and the fourth, Craig Benton, referred a reporter to Powell.

All four are veteran teachers and Powell is head of the Sisters Education Association, which represents the teaching staff in collective bargaining. He explained that, “If I weren’t one of the people involved in it I would have been more vocal in supporting the teachers and getting the word out that these are good people who do good things all the time and would never do anything knowingly wrong” in their work.

Joining Powell and Hewett on the record was Tim Comfort, the district’s personnel director, who was principal of the elementary school for 10 years up to last fall, when he moved into the new job.

In separate interviews, the two teachers and Comfort all agreed that Brown’s report offered a fair and reasonable explanation of the testing problem. They praised the district’s handling of the affair. And they scoffed at the suggestion that the teachers might have knowingly used a prohibited aid to try to boost test scores as described as “an equally plausible explanation” in a March 22 editorial in the region’s only daily newspaper, The Bulletin.

“I think it actually mentions in the (Brown) report that we didn’t have a motive to do that (try to inflate test scores) because our test scores have always been historically high to begin with,” Hewett said. “All of us just felt this is something that is an appropriate math tool that we use every day in our math class and that transfers into the testing situation.”

Hewett said that after the story broke he asked his class of 28 students how many had opened their reference books during the recent statewide test: “Six or seven hands went up.” Then he asked how many had found what they were looking for. “All the hands went down.”

Rather than showing that the students gained an unfair advantage by having the books, Hewett said with a chuckle, this shows that “we need to do a better job teaching them how to use the books.”

Brown’s report notes that while he was principal Comfort normally did not go into the room where statewide tests were being given. Partly in response to that, Comfort said over the weekend: “Gosh, if I had a chance to do it over again I guess I would say I should have been poking in more often. But part of my style was not to be a micromanager. There’s a healthy balance of giving direction and supervision and also empowering people and perhaps I did empower too much, but I would rather have people kinda knowing their business rather than always clipping wings.”

In trademark metaphorical style, when assessing the impact of the testing problem Comfort said that he “went to a very low point in my life as we anguished over these issues. But when you put it in perspective it wasn’t as big as (it might have been) so it sure feels like we have lost a pound of flesh over a skinned knee.”

Powell said one problem for the public is that a lot of people probably “don’t realize that the way kids are tested now is so much different than the way it was years ago. You know, the fact that they (the students) can take this test three times in one year to do better is a huge change…And they take it on the computer with lots of different aids and manipulatives and materials that they can use. That was part of the confusion, I guess, is that some materials that you can use (during statewide tests) would be comparable to the reference book in the math test. So it was just logical to us; it wasn’t something that we even questioned.”

The union head said that rather than being criticized the district “should be applauded for having the courage to look into things like this. None of us were trying to hide it, none of us were trying to get away with something or shortchange the testing process…We thought we were doing what was best for our students within the rules. We found out it’s not and we’re going to make those changes and move on and the kids will do just fine.”

Powell said that he and other teachers don’t oppose standardized tests, but they don’t like some of the overemphasis on them, either.

“I think they (tests) have their merit,” he said. “They can give you clear data on the skills the students need to bolster. But I think the fervor in America and the way schools are being judged by these tests, that doesn’t show the whole picture of what’s going on. It’s a very small part of what we do.”