At the beginning of my high school English classes I would project a quote from some author on my board, and, while the students copied it down, would explain the quote, its source, and, where it seemed obvious, ask the class questions about certain quotes and authors that acted like a mini-review of information they had received in previous years, but needed to remember long past then, things like author, era, some philosophical idea, and applicable literary terms.

This allowed for a constant painless almost covert review, not just some last minute, cram sessions before major tests.

I worked in a school district that really got into the testing frenzy back in the George W. Bush days. Not only did students take the state’s annual standardized tests, a process that consumed a week of class time that could have been used for learning, and a series of practice tests, but three times a year they took up a similar amount of time for a district test called “Benchmark Tests” whose purpose was to measure the growth in student achievement.

The expected result was that students would genuinely not do well on the first benchmark test of the year – how could they do well when being tested on information they had yet to learn or have the occasion to review – showing learning needed to take place, with the last test showing they had learned.

It made whatever methodology those outside the classroom with no teaching experience, or very little in years long past, demanded be followed because it sounded good to them.

As a fledgling altar boy in the old days, I memorized the complete Latin script for the Catholic Mass, the prayers, the statement and response moments between priest and altar boy which meant I had to learn the priest’s lines to respond on cue, the things only the altar boy said, and those said by both. I could recite it in my sleep. When I went into the sacristy for my formal interview with the priest in charge of the altar boys expecting we would just run the script so he would know that part was taken care of and all that was left was learning the liturgical choreography, he began at the “Suscipiat” somewhere in the middle and I was lost and thought my chances over.

He laughed and said he did it to see how I would react, he joked a lot, and assured me that if I knew the mass as we ran through it, we would eventually get to that point, and he would listen.

Apparently, there was more to that little joke as it counted for some prospective altar boys who stumbled as I did and who, because of that, didn’t make the cut. In his defense, although not objective, it did turn away some real jerks, and he knew who the jerks were because the parish had an elementary schools.

It was the same test, but applied differently. I was shown to be unflappable as I sat quietly hoping the priest would continue, apparently assumed to be stoically waiting for his next move, while for those others it was used as a sign of their unworthiness.

After administering the “BenchmarkTest”for a couple of years, I noticed that the questions were design to follow the curriculum backward. The first test was on things the students would not get to until the second half of the second semester, so obviously they would not do well, but as the tests moved on, they slowly became more in line with the target dates by which students were to learn certain things, so student achievement could be shown to have taken place and the methodology effective.

In the early frenzied days of testing, a whole industry grew based on methodologies and test preparation. It produced “consultants” on every possible topic who had the antidote to every problem, but came at a huge price, and totally, by coincidence, curriculum, projected learning dates, and classroom approaches and expectations slowly began to align to the test and not the test to the curriculum.

One method that too obviously showed the test makers controlled what kids would learn was the scripted curriculum approach where all the teachers teaching the same subject in any school in a particular district had a script to follow where anything they were to deal with in that class was spelled out along with how the teachers were to present the information with no room for spontaneity, or even dealing with something the kids got interested in or needed help with the kids were interested in or needed more help with. This way when the test arrived at the end of the year everyone had covered what would be on it, and nothing beyond that. It was all subject to the script, with the idea seeming to be that if you can read a script, you can teach.

With curriculum based on what testing companies claimed it should be, districts began to align more to the tests and found ways to manipulate results for appearance.

Along with the scheduled goals and objectives I was to have covered during the first quarter of one school year prior to the first benchmark test, I used my daily quote to review information the kids should already have had and made sure that my daily quotes were arranged so we covered some authors they would not cover in detail until late in second semester. When we ran into them later, they would be familiar to my students, but as for now, “always leave them wanting more”.

One such example would be the quote from Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass that allowed us to review certain poetic terms the students should have learned, and we would be referring to often, whetting their whistles for when we got to him later.

Since teachers do not get to see the questions in the test booklet, the only opportunity to see any questions at all was when we made the occasional obligatory walk up and down the aisles while proctoring an exam and glanced over the shoulders of students as we silently passed by their desks. So, I was surprised to see a question or two based on Whitman on that year’s first Benchmark Test especially as the curriculum I followed and the goals, objectives, and projected learn-by dates had long been established by the district, and it was the district that designed the Benchmark Test.

The school district was including questions they knew the students could not answer with anything beyond luck and a wild guess.

When the test scores came in, my students’ results skewed what was expected, perhaps hoped for. While others in their grade level throughout the district had done as expected, satisfactory recall of previous knowledge with none of what they had yet to cover, couched as below expectations, my students not only did well in the former area, but also in the latter where they were supposed to have looked bad. They showed they knew stuff and then some. As a result, they did not contribute statistically to the achievement growth chart as the necessary percentage increases of the other students needed a huge and easy rise to get to where my students began and from where they continued to move on.

The other classes had done as expected, and their initial scores compared to the final ones would show how much they had learned, so that whatever the preferred, mandatory methodology was, it was the best one.

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Because my students’ scores did not play into this, my administrator directed me under threat of disciplinary action to not do the daily quote review exercise from that point on, but replace it with some warm, fuzzy, short daily writing exercise that was based on showing a picture and having the kids write a short five sentence descriptions of their feelings toward it. I took the reprimand rather than replace an obviously effective method with some do-it-because-I-told-you-to pointless for my purposes exercise.

I continued to use my exercise which was based mainly on review of past knowledge onto which new information can be added.

Obviously, there was curriculum manipulation that was of no real benefit to the students unless student achievement was based on how well they followed the limits of test preparation.

For this reason, I have a problem with everyone with an opinion and an outlet to voice it, not teachers in the classroom, but the “experts”, the politicians, the talking heads of theory, who advocates for opening schools no matter what because students are falling behind.

Behind what?

When schools finally do open safely, the curriculum will morph either to become more inclusive, like bringing back Civics, reflecting new realities, or, ignoring the passage of time and the growth of the students, holds everyone to a binding curriculum at the point where things stopped.

In college we had a series of anti-war bomb threats called into the college and we would evacuate. After a while, the administration instituted the policy that when such a threat was called in, time would freeze so that we would return to the class we had been in at the time with the rest of the day’s schedule continuing on from the new start point.

After a while, and a very short one at that, the bomb threats ended. Apparently the “bomber” had a job he needed to get into after class.

No one “fell behind” as we simply continued on. Some end of the day professors, I had one, would modify what they had intended to cover on a bomb threat day so those who had them could get to their jobs, and they would modify their material for the next day to include what was omitted the day before.

There was an information delivery system adjustment as needed without any loss.

These kids now might be as bored as I am in this pandemic and miss their social contacts and interactions as much as I, but as far as falling behind, with every kid in the same position, who are they all falling behind?

Where is it part of the highly touted natural law that kids are supposed to learn the intricacies of math beyond Algebra II at a certain age in relation to other types of math, so each high school year gets one type year after year. or they have to learn addition and subtraction in one grade and multiplication and division in another. Certainly, there are creative ways to get all this information into kids’ heads so they aren’t behind the all-powerful Whatever it is they are behind.

I had been assigned a middle school Special Education class, and math was among the subjects I taught which, according to the curriculum, meant constantly repeating the four basic functions a million different ways. It became clear almost immediately that the students knew them pretty well already, so to avoid just boring them with useless repetition, I introduced Algebra as a math game that actually used those four functions to accomplish something, and on a dare my class eventually took on the school math club and won.

Were my students in my anecdotes ahead or behind, and if either, ahead or behind what. If the answer is it depends on curriculum, then my Special Education kids would have been held back by following the curriculum as established.

My theory?

For one whole year, students have not had to take standardized tests based on very often arbitrarily established curriculum and benchmarks established by the testing companies who make their money off testing but have not been doing so.

 If their progress has not been measurable because such tests cannot be administered during the pandemic, what is the benchmark being applied to determine that the students are falling behind?

Making a prediction here.

When schools reopen there will be a test to measure how far behind students fell. The testing companies will determine what each child should have learned at each grade level and will test it in standardized form designed by them, paid for, of course, by school districts.

This will result in a manufactured panic, as no one really knows how to do these measurements as even within one year, things have changed and that means adapting education to the post pandemic world, and in attempting not to look bad, and ignoring that no one living today has had to deal with these conditions so no one realistically expects omniscience on the part of anyone, for the sake of a good image school boards will hand it all over to self-proclaimed experts who, having success in one area assume it guarantees success in all and to the testing companies who will find more tests will be needed to measure the progress being made and the closing of the gap between two unknowns. The districts will ignore any beneficial input from teachers about this past year’s school experience in favor of the newly designed methodologies from the minds of those with as much experience with pandemics and their effects on people as the rest of us, but who somehow know more about how it affects students and learning than the teachers and on campus administrators who dealt with the kids physically and remotely throughout it.

Test results will be used to design curriculum, and the curriculum will be adjusted to align to the ever-changing, goal post moving tests.

Which brings me back to my original concern:  what is it that the kids have fallen behind, and who was it who determined that was the benchmark.

Kids are as resilient as we let them be. They will continue to learn when school reopens, and they will re-bond like kids do at summer camp with kids they only see once a year for a week.