Small Kine Protest Regarding the SLOs

Note: This was written on Wednesday morning.

 It's 3:00 in the morning. I woke up with my brain churning with all the things I have to do, deadlines I have to meet, tests I have to prepare for, and somewhere in there, a gnawing insistence that I need to do something to put the joy of learning into the day as well. For the past few weeks, everyone in Hawaii has been going through this stress and anxiety due to the SLO (Student Learning Objective) and Core Professionalism deadlines looming along with the high-stakes standardized testing as the year comes to an end. 

I just finished summative assessments for SLO 1, on decimal operations, which was pretty grueling. It was not a standardized test. It was curriculum-based, standards-based, and grueling for even the best students. The test anxiety was palpable. Yesterday, I did a formative assessment on SLO 2, adding and subtracting fractions with unlike denominators. Oh, and this after a lesson on volume in preparation for the "test," and also because it's in the curriculum and we have so much to do, so little time. I had set fractions aside a couple of weeks ago to focus on the SLO 1 assessment. So when I went back to fractions, most students appeared to have not remembered anything. Fractions have always been hard, but I have in the past made conceptual understanding a priority over using an algorithm to solve it. This year, I taught according to the Common Core aligned curriculum, which seems to make solving it via an algorithm the goal, even if there is no conceptual understanding. Result: they can not do either, for the most part. 

My dilemma, since the data is due 2 days in advance of my meeting with my administrator, I need to give them their summative assessment today. This I hate - giving a test knowing that most of them will fail, for the sake of the data. Here is the twisted part. We have to do two of these SLO projects,  but only one needs to be turned in. My decision: I am not giving the SLO 2 test at this time. I will continue to work with my students on fractions, and go back to developing conceptual understanding. They may not master it by the end of the year, but we'll keep working on it. My rating for SLO 2 will be "ineffective," and that is just what it will be. I'll use the SLO 1 rating to report to the DOE. 

It feels so radical, but it's really not. Other teachers have done much more radical and braver things like refused to administer standardized tests they believed were harmful to their students. But today, I made a decision that I will plan a day in which the goal will be joyful learning. I want to hear the sounds of students engaged in inquiry, in making things, in collaborating, in problem-solving. Screw the SLO 2, the EES, the data. Let hands-on science reign! 

Update: my appointment with my vice principal was rescheduled to Monday, and I thought I would know the outcome by the time I posted this, but I don't. As you see, I did do science. I blame myself for not doing enough of it. Teamwork and following rules of a lab setting is a challenge, but they are important learning opportunities. One never knows if test prep really helped my students in life, but I will never doubt that team-based science labs contributed to their social and intellectual development.