CSAP and Educational Accountability

According to Meaghan O’Brien, a fourth grade teacher at Cheltenham Elementary in Denver, students who are taught to the test will be lacking other skills they need to succeed in an educational setting, one being to think on their own. Teachers who teach to the test focus primarily on the content of the exam their students are taking, thus leaving out important information in certain areas of academia. I can’t wait for my first meeting with the football coach and the band director” (19). This shows the growing anxiety of teachers about student performance on standardized tests, and trying to help the students lead academically healthy and balanced lives. This type of rating system only aids in skewing the public perception of schools based on the CSAP exam. The state legislature produces these test preparation guides, only to administer a test that does not reflect the practice teachers have their students go through, but this is not the only way students are being set up for failure. Another reason teaching to the test is hurting education is because it is teaching students in a rote and robotic manner, and students can learn to depend on this kind of instruction. However, behind this increase in performance lies a brutal reality that many teachers are agreeing with: The CSAP sets up students for failure on the annual exam. Teachers have too many students, too many demands on their time and too few hours to focus on first-rate standards. Again, pressures to have students perform well on the CSAP can be overwhelming at times, forcing a teacher to contract their curriculum to fit in more instruction time for the subjects the students will be tested over. When different schools’ demographics are accounted for or when the amount of non English-speaking students are counted in a school in a school, it can be better realized that this may not be the answer to our educational reform questions. Teaching to the test may be helping some students succeed on the CSAP, but it will hurt students in the end. However, teaching to the test has another effect because it takes away from a teacher’s creativity, a source that can be critical to students’ learning. As Jones puts it, “Schools…will begin early, end late, have no electives, and give gifted students no lunch.