Why
Should Teachers Motivate Students To Do Well on Their Common Core Tests?
As
a teacher you have covered every learning goal on the new Common Core; you have
modeled argumentative and informative writing; you have reviewed M.L.A.
documentation and given your students apple opportunities to practice. What more can you do to prepare them for the
dreaded Common Core Tests?
There
will be those few renegade students who even though they have mastered all the
learning goals will purposely do poorly on their Common Core Tests. Why would they do that? Don’t they care how
this will look on their permanent records?
Actually they don’t. They know
they will not have to repeat the grade based on their test score. They know the test will not affect their
grade in your class. This is their
moment to take control, to show you that you are not the boss of them, to act
completely independently, to show you that they are really in charge. What their test score does affect is their
teacher and their school. As their
teacher you may have become their arch-enemy, their nemesis, and this is their
change to take revenge. Maybe you called their mother or maybe they are angry
because you didn’t let them sit next to their best friend. You will never know. As a school, they may be angry because their
parents made them attend this school instead of the one where their friends
attend. My dear husband was sent to a
Catholic School for his eighth grade. He wanted to be with his friends in
public school. To communicate his anger
to his parents and to prove to his parents that he didn’t want to be there, he
failed every class. Your student may be
making a point to his parents. To middle
school students achieving a high score on the Common Core Tests is not a
priority.
Why
should a teacher care how her students perform on the Common Core Tests? Parents might tell you that they do not care
how the school performs on these tests; they are only concerned about how their
children perform. Nevertheless, these
parents have a choice and when it comes to selecting a school, they all look at
the test scores and select a high performing school. Public schools are competing for students with
charter schools. Charter schools can
create sophisticated advertising on television and radio to lure parents to
their schools making them a very visual alternative for parents. Public schools only have those test
scores. Charter schools spend a
considerable amount of money making their campus look attractive. They become an attractive alternative for
many parents. When a public school loses
a large number of students to a charter school, the district is forced to
reduce its staff. Since in most school
districts seniority may not be the only factor in determining which teacher will
lose his jobs, your job could be lost.
If you are a novice teacher, it is even more likely you will lose your
job. If your test scores are not as high
as other teacher’s scores, even though you taught the core curriculum, your job
is still in jeopardy.
So
how do you ensure that all of your students do their best on the Common Core
Tests? Use a tactic that coaches have used in athletics for decades. From the beginning of the school year,
establish a “team’ or “community” feeling in your classroom. The students need to be told repeatedly the
famous words from The Three Musketeers, “It’s all for one and one for all.” When
you are using peer editing tell them, “Friends don’t let friends turn in bad
papers.” When they work in small groups, remind them to “use the circle of
help” to solve a problem before they ask you.
Finally create a little friendly competition with another school. I use a friend who teaches in a school with a
similar student-body and of course she uses my school. We tell our classes that they need to score
higher than the other school so I can tell their teacher, Marcia at Fort
Herriman Middle School, “In your face, South Jordan Middle School is better
than you.” The students laugh, but they
take the challenge seriously. Both schools benefit from this friendly
competition and it serves to unite the school into team. Most of them take their test seriously and
their scores are higher.
In
a perfect world, teachers should not have to worry about how their students
perform on a single test. In a perfect
world teachers should not have to worry about students transferring to charter
schools. We don’t live in a perfect
world. We live in a real world where
test scores matter and a drop in enrollment does negatively impact teachers. Always
remember the words of Vidal Sassoon, “If you don’t look good, we don’t look
good.”