April 15-21, 2004

city beat

Pencils Down

Spring is testing time in Philadelphia's schools. The stakes are higher than ever.

by Doron Taussig

Terra, TerraNova, it's the greatest test in history,

From the school of Fox Chase, we're about to have a victory!

Sung at Fox Chase Elementary School in the Northeast to the tune of "The Flintstones," that’s just one of many chants and cheers Principal Gina Hubbard reads over the loudspeaker to motivate her students.

Fox Chase is just one of the many Philadelphia schools that has completely altered its routine to adapt to the increasing importance of standardized testing. Yes, being in school is very different these days. And it's especially different in March and April.

Between March 22 and next Tuesday, Philadelphia students are taking the district's TerraNova test and the Pennsylvania System of School Assessment (PSSA) test. It's a pressure-packed time for both students and schools as TerraNova results are used to measure individual student's progress. (In other words, they decide who will receive extra afterschool instruction, who will be sent to summer school and, in some cases, who will be left back.) PSSA results are used to measure the progress of schools.

Under No Child Left Behind, struggling Pennsylvania schools must show a degree of improvement (known as Adequate Yearly Progress, or AYP) on the PSSA each year. Schools that fail to make AYP face a "sliding scale" of sanctions that begins with a warning after the first year of failure and, as time passes, may include additional oversight, enforcement of standards-based core curricula and ultimately the "reconstitution" of a school -- meaning they can be closed, privatized or turned into a charter school.

Parents have the right to transfer their children out of persistently failing schools as administrators find their jobs on the line. In short, the "sliding scale" is not a place that schools want to be.

In 2002, the first year of No Child Left Behind, only 22 Philadelphia schools made AYP while 216 did not. In 2003, 58 schools made the cut. Joseph Jacovino, the district's chief accountability officer, is confident that the number will again improve dramatically this year, but says, "The stakes are high for the remaining schools."

Once the scores are released this summer you'll hear a lot about who did well, who did poorly and what it all means but the effects go far beyond results. The entire Philadelphia curriculum is now designed to enhance student performance on these tests.

Testing is not conducted every day in the spring, but it takes almost a month for teachers and students to finally be able to say, "It's over." This, even after a few weeks of test-taking strategy preparation.

City Paper conducted a series of interviews with public-school teachers and administrators to find out what school life is like during testing season. While these interviews aren't a representative sample of school staff, they grant some insight into the possible ways that the new emphasis on testing can change the school climate.

Several common threads ran through every interview: Each educator said his or her school was taking testing very seriously, going through extra measures to ensure excellent attendance on test days and providing free breakfasts to students through a district program. But there were important differences as well; generally, there were three distinct atmospheres that educators said they experienced during testing.

Some interviewees said their schools are approaching testing season with much ado. They hold pep rallies, write chants and make bulletin boards to psyche up the students. Their motivator? Last year's scores.

"We tell them, "You can beat this!'" says Hubbard.

Every morning, Hubbard reads poems, cheers or raps that students have written about the tests over the loudspeaker. She believes "there's a lot of excitement here," and that it has spread to both the teachers and the students. Just the other day, a first-grader came up Hubbard and said, "I love the TerraNova!"

Sharon Miller, a third-grade teacher at Fox Chase, sees the same thing.

"The kids were so excited!" says Miller. "In 15 years' teaching, I've never had a pep rally for a test."

Barbara Janas teaches seventh- and eighth-grade math at Stetson Middle School in North Philadelphia, which is run by Edison schools. There, the principal also gives pep talks. On test-day afternoons, Janas brings in snacks and test-takers unwind by going to music, art or gym class.

"We follow the curriculum, but we're having fun, too," she says.

Asked whether they've felt pressure from their superiors, educators prefer to say they've received "support." (And the tests aren't "intimidating" -- they're "challenging.")

The children are given incentives--like ice-cream parties for classes with perfect attendance -- and though they understand the tests are important, their teachers try to get them to focus on exceeding expectations rather than fretting over failure.

Still, some Fox Chase educators expressed concern about the scores of special ed students. Unlike the TerraNova, which special ed students take at their instructional level, the PSSA is given to all students on grade level, regardless of individualized education plans. Still, Hubbard, Miller and Janas all said they were optimistic about their students' performance.

One might question the sustainability of this outlook. Will this year's fourth-graders be willing to get excited next year if the fifth-graders don't beat last year's scores? Can the teachers get excited for tests every February, and keep it up for months? Do some find the atmosphere contrived and annoying? Possibly.

But for now, Miller is enjoying it.

"In this school climate," she says, "you can't help but have a good time."

Other educators spoke of the testing season as if it were really nothing new. Philadelphia students have been taking "benchmark tests" every six weeks throughout the year to chart their progress; the first group of educators looked at those tests as a mere warm-up, but these interviewees say all tests feel more or less the same.

An administrator from Edward Gideon Elementary in the Strawberry Mansion said measures are taken to keep students relaxed -- for instance, disruptive students are immediately removed from classrooms -- but that the testing season is generally nothing special.

"We're just teaching the core curriculum and test-taking skills," says Ellen Cooper, principal of the Anne Frank School in the Northeast. "The climate doesn't change before the test, and during tests we just want to create an atmosphere conducive to testing" by keeping the school very quiet and ensuring that there are no interruptions.

It's not that their schools don't take testing seriously. Dedicating extra time to test-taking strategies before the test and offering incentives for attendance, they don't get into a frenzy come test time.

They do seem confused by the abundance of reminders and tips sent to them by the district, but appreciate the support. And they say they're confident about their students' performance, though it's a confidence of routine rather than a confidence of competitiveness. After the tests are over, says the administrator from Gideon, they won't change a thing as "We'll be testing again next year."

Some interviewees say they don't get to choose their climate -- that it was thrust upon them by the tests. Nan Daniels, principal of Lewis C. Cassidy Elementary in West Philadelphia, says, "Everyone is stressed about the PSSA." She thinks her school has been "living and breathing" tests for the whole year and that it's not good for the children.

"School is no longer fun. Learning has to be fun," she says, noting that she and her teachers are exhausted. "For the last month, every time teachers or principals turned around, it was, "Here's one more strategy for the PSSA.'"

Posters and charts with test tips are constantly watching over Daniels, reminding her of the primacy of the tests, but she's not entirely critical.

"We've been getting a lot of support in terms of personnel and test-taking strategies," she says. "They've done some wonderful things for us but we're all under the gun."

Chris Reuter, a special ed teacher at George Washington High School in the Northeast, considers the weeks before testing "very stressful," and finds himself "telling the students over and over that "The test is coming so pay attention,' or "This will be on the test so make sure you can do it.'"

His students are down on testing as "most of them begin to talk about how stupid the test is and how it "Only measures how dumb you are anyway.' I think that they truly hate tests."

Daniels, who cites the same sense of futility, sends home fliers to parents emphasizing the importance of attendance, rest and study during testing but suspects the fliers sent with fifth-graders never make it home. The school tried to hold a parent meeting, but no one came because "In this neighborhood, most of the parents are working, some at two or three jobs."

If you were thinking an educator's outlook might be related to how his or her school did in the past, well, so were we. But it turns out that of the six Philadelphia schools mentioned in this article, four had relatively similar scores on the PSSA in 2002-2003.

Fox Chase, Lewis Cassidy, George Washington and Edward Gideon all had between 30 and 47 percent of students at the "basic" level in reading and math, and 30 to 45 percent at "below basic." Fifteen to 25 percent were "proficient," and between zero and 10 percent, "advanced."

The Anne Frank School scored a little better in both subjects while Stetson, where one teacher described a "playoff" atmosphere, had a vast majority of students at "below basic" levels.

As a point of comparison, Copper Beach Elementary in Abington, right outside the city, had less than 3 percent of fifth-graders "below basic" in math, 9.1 percent at "basic," 25 percent "proficient," and 64 percent "advanced," with a similar distribution in the reading scores.

It's impossible to say how many schools have adopted a "playoff" atmosphere, how many are just going about their business and how many are feeling stressed and pressured. The district does not encourage any particular testing climate and Jacovino says he would "never second-guess principals and teachers. They know their own kids."

Still, he says that testing shouldn't be "the highest stress point in people's lives."

Teachers, he says, shouldn't feel pressure as the test approaches because the curriculum and test are designed to cover the same subject matter. In other words, students have been preparing for the tests all year. For the same reason, he thinks, kids should see this as an opportunity to "literally show what they've accomplished."

TerraNova results come back in June and PSSA results come in over the summer.

But already one thing is clear: Testing now reigns supreme, though it's not even clear whether the district will be able to follow through on its promise to hold schools accountable.

"They've said if a school fails a number of years in a row, they can pull out the staff. But there's a huge number of schools in corrective action. They can't replace all of those principals," she says before pausing to consider the possibility. "I mean, they could "