Why The Arts Matter and Why We Still Have to Prove It

I was recently reminded that if something isn't part of the standardized tests and government mandated batteries of assessment and evaluation in public education, it will be treated as secondary.  Specifically, I was told the arts are not as important because we are not assessed on them.  This devaluing of the arts has been going on for years.  "The arts are a luxury. " "They're not one of the '3 R's'" (a phrase so fraught with irony I'd better just ignore it).  "They're not on the test."  "They don't build job skills (lie)."  "They should not or cannot be graded."  Therefore, they don't matter.  They are what gets cut when budget cuts hit.

Even efforts to counteract this trend tend to focus on showing how the arts boost "academics."  The arts become a tool for teaching math, reading and writing.  So, let's start there.  How do you make academics accessible to a wide range of learners?  How do you engage struggling learners in math, reading and writing?  How do we prepare students for the jobs found in the visually-oriented digital age?  With the arts.  How do we teach persistence and creative problem-solving and the kind of intense focus and discipline that will support achievement?  With the arts.  How do we develop teamwork and explore diverse cultures and render content accessible to kids from poverty and kids from a  variety of cultural backgrounds?  With the arts.

If we want to close the infamous achievement gap, we need to stop doing more of the same.  We need to look at ways to access multiple learning styles.  We need to recognize that the kind of enrichment experiences that provide background knowledge for kids from higher socioeconomic backgrounds are far less available to kids from lower socioeconomic backgrounds, and that a wide range of enrichment experiences and background knowledge is part of the foundation upon which academic learning builds.  The words kids read in texts and the math concepts kids learn in class do not exist in a vacuum. 

But let's go beyond this level of argument for a minute.  When we talk about the "achievement gap" we define it by dominant culture standards.  We define it by scores on a one-dimensional, highly limited, standardized test created by people from the dominant culture and driven by the standards, values and thinking of the dominant culture.  So, we need to admit that we are allowing the dominant culture to frame the discussion and values.  We are seeking to give students the tools and skills to succeed in the dominant culture.  That's just reality.

However.  Those of us who are a bit more subversive in our thinking believe that more can and should be taught.  I believe that learning what it means to be a human being matters.  I believe that learning how to think and explore your world matters.  I believe that great innovation and change and discovery, the hallmarks of human progress throughout time, do not come from the standardized test mentality.

More than that, I believe that the arts are just as important as any other area of the curriculum.  Every time and place in the whole of human experience is reflected in artistic expression.  Every human culture throughout history and throughout the world has engaged in artistic expression - music, dance, visual arts, storytelling.  Human beings have created art since their earliest existence, and under the most appallingly inhumane conditions (concentration camps for example).  The creative urge is a fundamental urge.  It is not a luxury.  It is part and parcel of our identity as a unique species.  As such, it should be valued equally with other parts of the curriculum.  Just because we are not assessed on emotional development and character, does that mean those things should be devalued as well?  No.  When we become a world that prioritizes intellectual achievement above all, we lose something fundamental to who we are.  To paraphrase, what does it profit a child if he or she gains the whole of the test but loses their very soul?

Kids in Title I schools suffer this excision of the arts more than any other group.  The pressure of No Child Left Behind and other standardized test-driven "accountability" movements weighs most heavily on schools serving low-income, high-needs students.  This pressure has forced more and more teachers and administrators to treat the arts as expendable extras.  We even treat science and social studies that way.  All else must take a backseat to reading, writing, math.  It shouldn't.

Look at the world we live in.  Look at the magnificent range of ways that human beings make their living and find their way in the world.  How on earth can we say it is right to narrow our educational vision and devalue something that engages kinesthetic learners, visual learners, auditory learners, problem-solvers, and more?  Why are we still having to prove the value of the arts?  Why are we still making these artificial distinctions from one subject area to another?  The best learning takes place when we build neural connections between different areas of the brain, a magnificently complex and non-linear process, not when we compartmentalize and segregate.

Something has to change.

A Few Thoughts on the Atlanta Testing Scandal

As you may have heard, there is a massive scandal in the Atlanta public school system involving 58 schools and 178 educators, 35 of whom have been indicted for criminal activity.  It is a scandal about cheating on the state tests.  It is chilling and sobering.  The Superintendent has been indicted, among others.

As a teacher, about to begin the process of the state tests with my third graders, I can't help reflecting on the events in Atlanta.  Cheating is wrong.  No question.  However, I know the pressures we're under to raise test scores, to meet AYP (adequate yearly progress) goals, and the constant criticisms leveled at our public schools.  I know the anxiety that builds in my gut as the state tests approach.  I know how crushing it is and how much I question my skills as a teacher, my worth as a teacher, whether I even deserve to be in the classroom, when my class does poorly.

During the past 2 years, after brutal rounds of budget cuts that left us with 10-14 fewer school days, class sizes of 35 and higher in the elementary grades, and less support staff, we were told the passing scores on the state tests had been increased.  My results were not good.  I worked hard all year to help my students learn what they needed to learn.  Then I had to watch as they struggled and failed.  And I had to pick up the pieces and encourage them after all of that.

I know what it's like to watch a struggling reader who has not qualified to take a modified version of the test, or a student who is still learning English, try their best to read a text that is way beyond them, try and try and wear themselves down, while I am forced to bear witness, and restricted in what I can say to them.  This year, the very words I can say to encourage them have been scripted for me.  As I watch a student struggle and drown, not because I have not taught them but simply because they are not there yet, it breaks my heart.  Then, while my heart is breaking, that drowning child raises their hand and tells me they don't understand what a word means.  One word.  The word "contain", for example, in the phrase "Which of these polygons does NOT contain a right angle?"  The child knows "polygon."  She knows "right angle."  But that word "contain" has stumped her.  Or the phrase "according to the passage" (a phrase I have learned to use with my third graders throughout the year because the people who write tests can't be bothered to use kid-friendly language).  That child turns to me with pleading eyes, asking for help from the adult whose job, all year, has been to provide support and scaffolding so she can learn.  And I must refuse her.  I must say "Just try your best and choose the answer you think makes the most sense."

Those of us who teach tend to be empathic people.  We tend to be helpers.  It is against our deepest nature to turn away from a child who is struggling and in pain.  But that is what we have to do during the state test.

I try to prepare my students for this reality.  When we take in-class tests, I try to create a similar environment.  I remind them that I cannot help them.  I remind them that the person who learns from the test is me, because I will learn where they still need help and  what they don't understand.  I remind them that a test is just a time to show what they know and what they need to learn.  I try to help them understand that they should do their best and take the test seriously, but they should not be anxious or worried or make too much of it.  Mixed messages?

I try to teach my students what they, as third graders, are expected to learn.  I try to help them overcome the gaps that result from poverty and language differences.  I try to give them skills to outwit the tricks of the test.

And then testing day arrives, and my role suddenly changes.  I warn them in advance that I'm required to read certain directions and that there are rules about what I can say and do during the test.  I tell them that it might seem like an alien teacher has invaded.  And then, I become a Test Administrator.  And I watch as the wheels fall off.  I watch as a student who struggles with attention begins to simply click on answers and whip through the test (In Oregon, we take the test on computer).  I can no longer tell him or her to slow down, take a break or take their time.  I watch as their video game muscle memories kick in and they click on answers the way they would click on moves in their favorite game, rushing to get to the next level, not stopping to think and problem-solve.  I bear silent witness, hands tied.

Eventually it ends.  Back in the safety of our classroom, away from the inviolate space of the testing room, I remind my students that, while I want them to do their best, the test is still nothing more than a test, one measure of their learning.  It does not measure who they are in their hearts, and that is what matters.

And then, in a staff meeting, we look at the data.  All I can see is how far I still have to go.  I find myself getting jealous and resentful of colleagues whose scores are better than mine.  Later, I sit alone in my classroom and wonder what I did wrong, what I could do better, where I failed, and I forget the very words I told my students.  I forget that I am not my test scores any more than they are.  I forget that it is just one measure of my worth as a teacher.

So as I read about the Atlanta scandal, I cannot help but pause.  Cheating is wrong.  I would never change my students answers or tell them which answer to choose.  But I'd be lying if I didn't understand, in some part of me, how so many educators found themselves going down such a wrong road.

What Matters

On the list of things that matter, your score on the state test isn't even a footnote.  You are not a number.  You are a human being.  For years and years, people who like numbers and run like frightened rabbits from the messy immeasurability of humanity have tried to reduce people to numbers.  It's no more realistic than trying to reduce God to a book or a set of human rituals.  Your score on the state test won't matter 100 years from now.  It won't even matter 20 years from now.  What matters is what you do with what you have.  What matters is how you treat other people.  What matters is how you live this one and only life that has been given to you.  This has been a public service announcement from one teacher opposed to standardized testing.  Life is anything but standardized.