Testing: When Life Gives You Lemons, Make Lemonade

As teachers in the US are returning to school, many are beginning to moan and groan about the overwhelming tide of testing that has engulfed the US educational system.  Assessments seem incapable of surviving alone.  Within a year, they reproduce like rabbits. Because, of course, you need a test to see if your kids are ready for the BIG TEST.  And if one of those tests a year is good, then one per term is even better for progress monitoring.  And that test doesn't test everything, so you need to sprinkle in a few others for good measure.  Then, of course, the next grade level wants a different assessment from the ones you use, so...  You get the idea.
     Like it or not, I don't think this frequency of assessment is going away any time soon.  It is too convenient a measuring stick for districts, principals, and teachers.  And that, my friends is the real wave of the future.  In some states, the bottom performing 10% of the teachers in a school must be fired.  In my school, assessment data is used to create yearly goals that count as a percentage of our annual performance review.  Right now that percentage is small.  But it is bound to rise in the coming years.
     So, when life gives you lemons, make lemonade!  That's right!  When your students are required to take yet another test, make it worth it... for both them and you.
Making tests worthwhile to you:
1.  Learn as much as you can from the assessment data.  If you don't know how to read the assessment data (few of us learned to do this in college), ask your school "data guru".  Every school has at least one.
2.  Use what you know about your students and how you taught them to interpret the results.  Many people rely on others to "read" their data for them, but even the wisest data guru is limited because they don't know your kids and how you taught them.  Leave the data gurus to look at the big picture- trends across the grade and grade levels. Only you know whether a weakness the test reveals is because you haven't taught it yet or you did teach it, but your students didn't master it.   For example, last year my principal remarked that my Math class was the weakest in the grade level on data, statistics, and probability.  Since I had already looked at my own data, I agreed.  Then I showed her the results for my class at the beginning of the year.  Every child's weakest area was number sense and operations.  Since number sense and operations are the foundation of Math, I decided to focus my teaching in this area throughout the year.  Yes, because of this focus, something had to give.  But, by the end of the year, not a single child had number sense and operations as their lowest area.  And the class overall had the third highest level of overall growth in test scores.
3.  Know your test data well.  Like it or not, your tests scores will be used to assess your teaching ability and compare you to others. Suck it up and be proactive.  Be honest about what your data says.  Even it's not complemenary, be prepared to say how you will use the data.  And find the nugget of wonderfulness in your data, even if it is just one child.
3.  Use your assessment data and, when you do, tell your students that you are doing it.  Something along the lines of:  "Your recent ______________ test showed that ______________.  So today we are going to _________ ."
Making test worthwhile to them:
1.  Given them information about how they performed last time on the same assessment and what their goal is for this one.  A bit of specific advice never hurts.
2.  Give students feedback on their performance as soon as possible.  Next generation assessments can do this immediately, but don't just be content with a score.  Again, here is where your interpretation will be vital.  Put it in kid-friendly language.  Try to come up with at least one positive comment, such as how hard they worked or how long their written answers were.
     I  assure you that when you follow these words of advice, your students will do their best on the test.  They will become hungry for your feedback.