Where shall I begin in my annual prosecution of the distorted weight of the state standardized test, the CSAP?
Exhibit A: The humiliation of Peter Douglas. The teacher at Goldrick Elementary School in Denver was pictured in Tuesday’s paper at a school CSAP assembly wearing a blond wig, purple dress and what appears to be black knee socks.
Exhibit B: Bribery. Principals prefer the word “incentives,” but bribery it is. Take the test and get a chance to win a 32-inch flat-screen television! iPods! Cash!
Exhibit C: Parents of 67 students in Commerce City pull their kids out of school on a test day — not to protest the test but to denounce other, unrelated district decisions.
Finally: I’m driving, and my kids are in the backseat when my fourth- grader says to my first-grader: “You are so lucky, you don’t have to take the CSAP.”
“I take tests too,” the first-grader says.
“Not like the CSAP,” fourth-grader says. “My stomach hurts just thinking about it.”
“All the CSAP does is measure whether you can do fourth-grade- level work,” I chime in. “You can, so don’t worry. Your responsibility is to do what you would do on any test — your best.”
Silence from the backseat.
“So if we fail the test,” my daughter says, “then our teachers won’t lose their jobs?”
That’s the anxiety permeating the air. I know some of you would do away with the CSAP today if you could. Afraid I can’t join you there. The information it provides is important. If you believe the test is fair — and yes, I know, some of you don’t buy that, either — then it reveals what was once hidden in our schools. Say, for example, the achievement chasm. It demands, then, a systemwide accountability once lacking.
We’ve been taking this test in Colorado how many years now? Twelve? Yet, a profound misunderstanding persists about what it measures and what those measurements mean. That ignorance has proven over time to be a fertile breeding ground for all sorts of political manipulation. The CSAP has become both straw man and bogeyman.
I spent a year writing about a high school here. I know it’s hard for teachers and administrators to win buy-in from middle- and high-school students. I understand that we’re still, astoundingly, talking about alignment — making sure curriculum reflects standards reflects test. Were alignment no longer an issue, there would be no such thing as “teaching to the test.”
I know, too, the ludicrous amount of pressure placed upon schools. I once tagged around with an assistant principal who was searching for truant students so she could either woo them back to class or talk their parents into withdrawing them altogether so that the school’s scores would not be punished by no-shows. If that doesn’t tell you that the emphasis has been misplaced, I don’t know what will.
The CSAP is a test, not a battering ram. It’s been used that way only because we allowed that to happen. It doesn’t tell you how good or bad a school is. It tells you whether students can do grade-level work on a certain day at a certain time. The end.
Even as I write this, the conversation around the CSAP is changing. The state is rolling out what I believe is a far more valuable — and fairer — measure of performance. It’s been tracking individual student data from year to year to reveal academic growth. Parents will be able to see how students in schools similar to their own child’s are doing. And if they’re not doing as well, that’s the time to ask why, to demand accountability.
More changes are in the works. The state is rewriting standards. A refining and refocusing of what students need to compete in a global world is underway.
“Are our students catching up, keeping up, moving up? That’s what we’re asking,” state education commissioner Dwight Jones told me. “We’re looking at more rigor and more relevancy.”
Whatever the new test may be, it probably won’t be called CSAP.
As for Goldrick teacher Peter Douglas, I can report he looks much better in khakis than he does in a dress.
You have to like a teacher who is willing to make a fool of himself by doing a “can-can” dance to inspire his students.
Maria Uribe is the new principal of Goldrick. Seventy percent of its 600 students are learning English as a second language. Almost 90 percent qualify for free or reduced-price lunch. Uribe is a strong defender of the CSAP because she is a strong defender of English-language learners.
“When we didn’t have the CSAP, those kids were in the corner,” she said. “If they did well, fine. If they didn’t, fine. No one cared. No one looked at them. Now, they do.”
Goldrick has been a low-performing school, but its students are showing academic progress, outpacing similar schools, meeting many of the district’s expectations.
What you did not see in Tuesday’s photo was Uribe herself. The native of Colombia wore her doctoral gown and hood. She said to her students: I am an English-language learner, and I know it’s hard, but you have to believe in yourselves. You can do it.
“That was the message of the assembly,” Uribe told me. “We are a ‘high-growth’ school. We’re beating the odds. I told them: ‘I know you can do it. You know you can do it. Now, show everyone else.’ ”
Tina Griego writes Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays. Reach her at 303-954- 2699 or tgriego@denverpost.com.
