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Classroom tales: A diary

December 21, 2010

Starving the Child

by Ruben Brosbe, at 12:09 pm

A friend of mine who teaches at another school shared a quote recently which he heard from an early childhood specialist: “Just because a famine is coming, doesn’t mean you starve the child.” The woman made the comment in regards to the misguided approach some schools are taking to push test prep into the lower grades. I think it sums up the tragic mistake of stripping away effective child-centered/play-oriented activities in favor of “drill and kill” instruction pretty well. But I also think her words hold true for the older kids as well.

Thanks to the new testing schedule, schools like mine have a little bit more breathing room in our curriculum. The run-up to winter break is no longer a frantic race to prepare the students for the English language arts exam a week or two after the vacation. But that doesn’t mean that high-pressure test prep won’t eventually take hold. In fact, I’m guessing soon after we return from break, the grueling march to get our kids ready will begin in schools like mine across the city.

But are we starving the kids to prepare for a famine? In many ways, and to varying degrees depending on a school’s approach to test prep, kids are deprived of meaningful, rich, effective instruction in the weeks or months leading up to the state exams. This may or may not prepare them better for this year’s test, but it undoubtedly shorts them in the long-term.

First, when Kaplan or Pearson test-prep materials take the place of a well-planned read-aloud or time for guided reading, the kids don’t learn as well. Second, the pressure and dullness of test prep certainly takes most of the fun out of learning for the kids. So ultimately students are learning less, and they’re enjoying learning less. This is not a formula for long-term success.

I can only hope as standardized tests become more authentic and meaningful, this practice will finally be exposed for its uselessness and be discarded. For the present, there are too many second-graders who are being forced to fill out weekly multiple-choice tests “to get ready” and third- through eighth-graders whose classrooms are taken over by a test-prep mentality. We are not helping these children by “starving them” in anticipation of the “famine.”

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  • Bronxactivist

    The sad part is that as teachers there is no say. Everyone gets in test prep mode overdrive. The kids hate it but are scared of being held back for the most part. Except the kids that say hey I will retake the test after summer school and move to the next grade. Thank you for exposing these test prep factories that the city encourages as opposed to the whole child being educated.

  • Mr Bill

    Ruben is nothing but a shill for Michelle Rhee. See the video. Fifty seconds in.

    youtube.com/watch?v=YWpiq5IgRdE&feature=youtube_gdata_player

  • I noticed that

    Why are you not supporting the public school system and you’re in a Michelle Rhee promotional video for her education deforms called StudentsFirst.org? I saw your 50 second spin (slide the time to 50 seconds) on teachers having parents more involved, if we had more books, etc. You know that the DoE have set-up the public schools for failure. You know that Klein and his Tweed deformers created an unfair, somewhat biased, progress report that strategically label schools with a low grade in order to phase out those schools. Most of the schools being closed are in the Bronx and don’t you work in District 10? Why would you be in a video that promotes the ousted D.C. Chancellor Michelle Rhee, who does not care for the children but only promotes charter schools. Do you not work in a public school? Do you love working with the children in your public school? Don’t you think it is unfair that the ed deformers are taking away all the public school resources and giving them to these charter schools, where reports show that charter schools are not successful.

    I hope that you can shed some light on the matter of why be involved in a Michelle Rhee video to promote her agenda to destroy public schools.

  • Pogue

    Why didn’t anyone in the video, including you, Ruben, talk about the benefits of taping young students’ mouths shut?

    Rhee says it works and it’s not too painful.

    Studentsfirst, my arse.

  • Ruben

    There are definitely issues I’m sure Michelle Rhee and I don’t agree on, but I don’t think that excludes me from adding my voice to her organization. In fact, it makes more sense to me to include a diversity of ideas within a group.

    I noticed, the charter school issue is one in particular that I am most at odds with the policymakers on, but again, I don’t think that means that the people in charge aren’t trying to help all kids learn or are trying to destroy public schools. This might make me naive, or a sell-out or whatever label you prefer. I just believe that I can strongly disagree with decision makers, without assuming they have malicious intentions for kids and schools.

  • ASTRAKA

    Ruben,
    regarding “without assuming they have malicious intentions for kids and schools.”
    Think carefully and analyze the effects of the reform movement. Imagine yourself in a school that will be closed, and see how the DOE is starving those schools to slow death. Imagine yourself branded as an ATR with all the negative connotations that the brand caries. Imagine being evaluated by statistical methods that at the least questionable. Imagine yourself teaching using “New” textbooks of questionable quality. I will not call “naive, or a sell-out or whatever label you prefer”. That accomplishes absolutely nothing.

  • Pogue

    I’ll go with naive.

  • Michael Fiorillo

    Ruben Brosbe,

    Did you ever consider that your,”Well, they may be hurting kids and destroying schools, but that’s not because they intend to,” shtick is why you have the platform you do? Even when you purport to criticize, you validate the premises of ed deform. 

    As for playing the ingenue, my personal favorite is, “…as standardized tests become more authentic and meaningful…”

    QED

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