Apodaca: Pressure means that teaching to the test won’t last

In a recent column, I observed that the Corona del Mar High School cheating scandal highlighted the over-reliance on outside tutors.

I noted that too many parents, particularly in affluent areas, unquestioningly pay often-exorbitant rates to tutors out of fear that their children won’t succeed in a highly competitive academic environment. I suggested that in some cases — not all, but definitely some — students might be better served in the long run by tackling course material strictly on their own.

My comments prompted some interesting responses by friends and readers, who lamented the tutoring craze and expressed frustration over what they characterized as being at the mercy of a public education system that teeters toward dysfunction in many respects.

As one friend very aptly put it, “I think we all wish everyone would stop so that we could stop and not worry that our child won’t be the one without the advantage ... the vicious cycle, the race to nowhere.”

I also often run my column topics by my sons, both graduates of CdM, to get a student-focused perspective on issues of concern to parents. In this case, the response from one of my sons was particularly telling.

He was surprisingly sympathetic toward parents who automatically assume that tutoring is necessary. They are being driven by a teach-to-the-test culture in which students often learn too little of real substance, but are instead required to constantly prep for an assembly line of multiple-choice tests, he said. Tutors are seen as the means to get students through the rapid succession of those mile-wide, inch-deep exams.

The heavy reliance on tutoring isn’t the problem, he observed. It’s just a symptom.

Of course, the sentiment that our high-stakes, fill-in-the-bubble testing environment is completely mad is nothing new. Critics have been attacking the system since No Child Left Behind, the federal law passed in 2001, ushered in the modern age of holding public schools accountable through benchmarks on student progress as measured by standardized tests.

Not only were the tests deemed problematic for showing only a one-dimensional snapshot of what students might know, but they were also slammed because they were given disproportionate importance over other factors influencing schools’ relative success or failure.

Moreover, critics charged, the strategy of using standardized-test results to sanction some schools has too often been counterproductive, in essence punishing those schools — for the most part low-income, minority-filled campuses — that are in most need of assistance.

At the same time, schools in high-income areas, like CdM, boast of their high standardized-test scores as if they’re championship trophies, ignoring the reality that those favorable results are mostly the product of wealth and access to abundant support services, tutors included.

As the backlash to the testing phenomenon has grown in ferocity over the years, the opposition has become more organized, vocal and politically influential. But just recently, another shift has emerged. Rather than focusing primarily on just complaining about testing, the conversation is evolving into a more mature discussion of what to do to fix this imperfect system.

Features and editorials in respected news outlets aren’t merely pointing out that the system is broken, as they have in the past. Now they are presenting ideas about the way forward. A recent Time Magazine piece, for example, cited examples of schools successfully moving away from traditional standardized tests and toward more complex and nuanced ways of measuring learning. It also suggested that candidates for the 2016 presidential campaign will be under pressure to take a stand on testing and offer up their own reform proposals.

A new book by education journalist Anya Kamenetz, “The Test: Why Our Schools Are Obsessed With Standardized Testing — But You Don’t Have to Be,” was recently labeled by the New York Times as the “guidebook” for the anti-testing movement.

The book details the growing discontent with testing, which is finally prompting policy-makers to react. She also offers ideas for alternative means of assessing students and schools, many of which rely heavily on technology to track students in real time, and focus on more holistic approaches to measuring educational progress.

And from the same folks who brought us “The Race to Nowhere,” the documentary that won a large following a few years ago with its argument against high-stress, high-stakes testing, a new film titled “Beyond Measure” is forthcoming. According to the filmmakers, the new piece is more focused on solutions and tells the stories of “schools that are breaking away from our culture of rote instruction and ceaseless standardized testing” and trying different methods of teaching focused on personal growth.

While the debate over testing remains divisive and major philosophical differences persist, one point is now becoming clear: A growing consensus suggests the current system is not serving our students well and that something must be done to make it better. How the reforms will play out — whether we’ll see just minor tweaks or full-scale policy overhauls — isn’t yet known.

But change we will see. That is becoming abundantly evident as a growing chorus from the ranks of educators, parents and policy-makers calls for us to get off the testing-go-round and move toward a fairer and more sensible and meaningful way to assess student progress.

PATRICE APODACA is a former Newport-Mesa public school parent and former Los Angeles Times staff writer. She lives in Newport Beach.