The Dispatch article this week on Gilroy High School advanced
placement teachers Kanani Pratt and Elia Scettrini was an excellent
example of effective teaching strategy. These two teachers are
apparently wildly successful in preparing their students to pass
the AP exams.
The Dispatch article this week on Gilroy High School advanced placement teachers Kanani Pratt and Elia Scettrini was an excellent example of effective teaching strategy. These two teachers are apparently wildly successful in preparing their students to pass the AP exams.
I laughed out loud when I read that there were critics of the method of “teaching to the test.” It is apparent to me, as the mother of three over-tested students, that it is essential to “teach to the test.” Either that, or make all the schools here in Gilroy alternative schools.
In most school districts across the nation, accountability to state and national standards is the norm.
This may be a new concept to Gilroy and new to California, but that is the way things are done.
I learned this the hard way while spending two years in Texas, where the TAAS (Texas Assessment of Academic Standards) test rules. The TAAS test is the benchmark test for the Department of Education in the State of Texas.
My daughter started fourth grade on the day her new classmates were taking the TAAS writing test. Hew new teacher tried mightily to dissuade me from having her take the test, because she was transferring from Gilroy, California. Apparently, our academic reputation reeks only slightly less than our famous garlic.
I insisted she take the test, and she scored in the 99th percentile. Schools in Texas live and die by the TAAS test. If you test well, you become a recognized, honored or exemplary school. Property values spike in neighborhoods with the highest TAAS scores.
What Texans don’t know, or at least don’t acknowledge, is that the state standards are pitifully low. While schools that we attended there were modern, clean and beautifully kept up in every way, they lacked a great deal in the academic area.
The only advantage over California was a well-planned physical education program and a longer school day. This longer school day was the result of having art and music classes for primary grades. There was very little meat in the actual curriculum.
When we moved back to Gilroy after a two year absence, the two children attending Rucker School found the work more rigorous than in Texas. They were learning more in the crumbling rural school than they were in the architecturally magnificent school they left behind in Houston.
My oldest started at Brownell, and I can assure you, there is plenty of homework and rigorous curriculum for her there, she is up to almost midnight every night. Even though she complains, I must acknowledge Ron Ayala, Gilroy’s teacher of the year. Mr. Ayala is doing a great job of preparing Carly for the load of work she will be getting in high school.
Teachers need to “teach to the test.” The California standards are challenging, there is no easy way to pass the test if you aren’t taught the standards. Instead of going the TAAS route, California has raised the bar.
I hope that all of our teachers learn how to “teach to the test” because testing on standards is only going to increase in scope. While we test for math and writing today, we may test for social studies and science within two years.
Test-taking strategies are essential to all college-bound students, and this is a skill that should be honed over the years. Let the education talking heads moan that we are not addressing the student holistically. That holistic approach may do wonders for a student, but it certainly doesn’t prepare them to excel on the AP exam or the SAT.
If we are unprepared to start “teaching to the test” we better make sure that we teach them all to ask, “Would you like fries with that?”
