A parody by Bobby and I, sung to the tune of “Surfin’USA”:
“If everybody lived in ghettoes,
across the USA,
then everybody’d be SURRfin,’
the West Harlem way.
They’d all be scorin’ some one’s,
or maybe low, low two’s.
Everybody’d be singin’
the S.U.R.R. blues.”
I was born and raised in South Texas. Many years of my education were spent 1) learning to affect a very convincing Southern drawl (through informal study) and 2) preparing for the state’s standardized TAAS tests. TAAS was pronounced “toss,” because teachers wanted to do just that to all the prep books and practice quizzes. Teaching to a test is never the best curricular goal, nor does it fairly assess the abilities of all students. BUT. Students will be inundated with tests their entire lives, and they should get used to it. Good test scores help students get farther in life, whether it means they can legally drive a car or get into a competitive university. Good test scores also earn schools more money to enhance the academic environment.
My teachers hated the TAAS test and probably performed the teacher-led TAAS pep rallies and ice cream float incentive parties with some reluctance. However, my school achieved top scores. Even though I was the only person in my tenth grade class to get exemplary marks on all areas of the test, the school was proclaimed “Exemplary” by state test and attendance standards when I graduated in 2001. I didn’t get to see the fruition of our new label, but I know Odem High School constructed at least three new school facilities after this.
So now I’m one of those teachers proctoring a standardized state test that I don’t agree with. I’m in New York, though, where the test has reading, short answer, editing, and listening sections. It’s much more complicated that the TAAS test I took. My students also come from a very different environment - at home and at school - than I did. On any given day, 60% of my students do not have a writing utensil. A higher percentage of them live on government assistance in single-parent homes. A higher percentage do not read or write at their grade level. The school environment is generally chaotic, with a very high teacher turnover rate and an even higher teacher:student classroom ratio.
On top of it all, students are taking the test that demonstrates all of the English Language Arts skills they’ve developed throughout the school year IN JANUARY. How does this make sense? One final blow: Students are taking the test on Tuesday, the day after they’ve been out of school to honor MLK Day. There’s a reason most schools do not have major exams on the first day of the week, and that reason is recovery. I don’t mean to be the eternal pessimist, but I’m thinking the kids are screwed. (The test dates and times are statewide, so students in Yonkers and Whitepeopleland, NY will also be detrimentally affected by poor state educational planning. However, I feel with the ghetto kids, the planning only adds insult to injury).
I.S. 666 was considered a SURR (Schools Under Registration Review) school only a year ago. SURR schools are those schools that do so poorly on standarized tests that they get a few months to improve scores or they get shut down. If that happens, I guess students are then required to go to other neighboring schools, which then get more overpopulated with low-performing students. Then maybe that school will go on the SURR list and then… In Harlem, it’s all about the vicious cycles, yo.
I have a feeling that my school is destined for a reunion with the the SURR committee in a few months, and the administrators are going to have streams of diarrhea sliding down their legs and trailing them in the hallways. And then there might be a fan. There are going to be a lot of meetings where fingers are pointed and questions are asked. Why weren’t the teachers more effective? How many new teachers are we going to have to hire so that each class doesn’t have thirty-three students in it? (This is illegal in a SURR school and should be illegal in EVERY school). How can we alter the curriculum to where we get the maximum test prep time and cut out all that trivia garbage, like creative writing, critical thinking, blah blah bah?
Ready or not, the test is coming. I don’t feel like there’s anything else I can do, but show up on Tuesday and be an active proctor…in the tiny, cluttered, currently deskless office that is reserved for me and three Special Ed studens.
The test is a necessary evil, but the conditions could be, should be so much better. Yes, SURR.
