Scores and Inequalities

Hey there and welcome back to A Summer of Refuge! After this I will only be posting 2 more times, as I only have 2 more weeks left at Exodus.
This week, my new students took their first unit test to assess how much they have learned so far in the course. And I was surprised at how well they did! I think they have learned a lot and have improved their English, even after only 2 weeks. I have to say, as a teacher I feel responsible for their test scores. When I was in the Dominican Republic taking an ESL certification course, we had to read a very interesting article about teachers feeling a sense of too much responsibility. And it's absolutely true. How happy would a teacher be if all of his or her students scored 100% on their exams? I would be thrilled! But this is an unrealistic expectations, because our students are humans, not robots. Everyone learns differently and everyone takes tests differently, some better than others.
Often I think that we base too much of what we think is intelligence on test scores. Now, I know that this is an argument that we get into a lot, and I'm aware that in the United States our system is a whole lot less test-based than in other parts of the world. But often I wonder how many students fall behind, are seen as dumb, are not respected or given opportunities just because they test badly? Unfortunately, this is a lot of people. I have always been an advocate of equal opportunity in every sense of the word, especially when it comes to education, because I am one of those people who believes that a good education is a key to security, success, and the improvement of a person's quality of life. This is my sociology side coming out, and now I've come across a new idea: that the importance of test scores in the education system is a form of inequality.
Of course I agree that standardized test scores do not promote an equal playing field whatsoever. If you don't go to a good school, you aren't going to learn as much. If you don't have the resources to seek extra help, how can you expect to study correctly? A score on the ACT or SAT does not represent how intelligent you are. To me, it represents two things: your accessibility to certain information and your willingness to study for the test. When I first came to DePauw, I specifically remember how exciting it was to talk to my new classmates in my first year mentor group. The first night, a few of us were hanging out in one of the dorm lounges, getting to know each other and getting past the preliminaries (where are you from, what do you want to be your major, etc) before really becoming friends. Well, we started to get on the subject of AP courses.
I went to a small public high school in rural Iowa, which is not necessarily what colleges like DePauw are looking for. However, I considered my high school to be one of the better ones in the area, and I appreciated all that was offered to me. In my eyes, I had just as good a chance as any to get into the school I wanted. And when I went to DePauw, I felt even more confident about this. But when I started talking to other first year students, I realized that I might not have been as high on the spectrum as I thought. I was asked, "What AP courses did you take?" "How many AP credits do you have?" "My score on the ACT was 32...how about yours?" At first, I felt very out of place. I had never taken AP courses because my school didn't have them. I got a 27 on the ACT, which wasn't the score that I wanted, but eventually it worked out. Many of my fellow classmates went in to college already having college credits because of their AP scores, and could less classes in one semester. This was something I couldn't relate to, an opportunity that I couldn't take advantage of. And I slowly came to realize that not having taken AP courses put me at a major disadvantage when applying to college.
But I have no room to complain because I definitely consider myself on the middle to high rung of the social spectrum. I never had to deal with major financial difficulties growing up, my parents were able to help put me through college, and now I have an internship and plan to go to grad school. This is as far in life as I ever hoped to get, and I am so grateful.
But what about everyone else? Not everyone else has been so fortunate as I have. I consider myself a pretty good test-taker if I know the information at hand. But what about everyone else?
Now I find myself on the other side, expecting my students to get As on the tests I give them, becoming frustrated when they don't. But then I come to realize that not only am I raising the bar too high for them, but also for myself as a teacher. Every point that is wrong, I wonder if I just didn't do a good job teaching the material. Once again, students are human beings, not robots. No one is perfect, and for me to expect perfect scores across the board is unrealistic and doesn't necessarily represent my skills as a teacher. So now I am working on not worrying so much about the scores, but about the individual in class, and whether I am contributing to their active learning. Being a teacher sure makes me miss being a student sometimes :)
Just some food for thought! I'll be back next week with more to report!
Anna