Its Not Over Until We Say Its Over - The End of Summative Assessment

I remember my last swim race. Senior year of college, a cold February Sunday in Holland, Michigan. I remember the brown bricks around the natatorium. Chatting with Brian Miller as we warmed up in the diving well adjacent to the pool. I remember the feel of the blocks beneath my feet. I remember the chill of the air as I stood ready to start, thinking this is my last race. I had been swimming since I was nine years old at Indian Boundary YMCA. I had stood upon the blocks of various pools countless times. I remember the rush of the water going past my ears as I entered the pool. The pull, the kick, and the pull again as I emerged swimming the 200 yard Breaststroke. I remember nailing the third turn. I don't remember the time. I don't remember the place. I remember Brian won the race. Mostly, I remember the feel, being proud of the time (maybe it was 2:21?), and knowing this was the end.

The funny thing is that for many of my friends college swimming wasn't the end. They swim masters races and triathlons. My Uncle Leo swam into his late seventies, competing in world level championship. Even though the constructs we had growing said this would be the end, it wasn't the end of the story but rather simply the end of this chapter.

In schools we teach this artificial idea that learning and experiencing are time bound. Now we are on the Kinetics chapter. Next month we are learning Thermodynamics. You need to complete and demonstrate that you have mastered Kinetics by the 28th as that's when we are having the summative assessment. We create artificial boundaries as to when children can learn a concept and when they have to master it by. We teach students that if they don't master it, the concept will go away and they just simply weren't very good at it. We construct the artificial notion that learning is time bound and all they need to do is have a "passable" result.

Children aren't naturally inclined to giving up. Only in school. Children aren't naturally inclined to produce mediocrity. Only in school. The time and number of attempts to learn something is only limited in school. Mostly because we say so. I watch my friend's daughter make pastries. She loves to be crafty. She is willing to make the tiniest of pastries with the most artistic of coverings. She will spend hours manipulating the frosting. Her sister will spend hours building her world in Minecraft. My son will spend hours recreating his construction in magnet blocks. Learning, recovering from repeated failures and making adjustments, is only limited by our industrial age vision of school. The course, the class, the grade, the summative assessment, and the ranking teach children to fail, be mediocre, and it will go away. In other aspects of their lives they learn resiliency and perfection.

It's time for us to say good bye to the summative assessment. The test at the end of learning. We need to think of the curriculum as skills students need to master and continue to work with them if they don't. It is not the Chemistry class that's important, but rather the concepts that make up Chemistry. Learning Thermodynamics but not Kinetics is a problem. Both are valuable, both are necessary, and both have equal merit. We may move on in the class from Kinetics to Thermodynamics, but it is my responsibility as teacher to help the children that have not mastered Kinetics to learn it regardless of the extra time and extra work. It is the student's responsibility to learn it regardless of the extra time and extra work. Just because the main learning has moved on doesn't exempt us from learning the concept.

Time is an artificial construct. In the elementary school district I work in now, we have at least nine years to have each of our students learn as much as possible. Even longer for children who begin in preschool. Learning a concept isn't over until they cross that podium in eighth grade and even then we pass the baton to our high school. Summative assessments imply that learning is complete. We as a system have a choice. We can choose to use the data from that assessment to influence the next opportunity to learn regardless of content area or concept. It's not over, until we say its over whether we are a parent or a student.

I remember working with a young man as an assistant principal. He decided not to do anything in class beginning in late April. It frustrated the teacher, the parents, and us administrators. He was going to wait it out. He knew school was going to go away in June. What he didn't realize was both mom and I worked for the district and I was working summer school. The school year ended and mom kept bringing the young man to school. After the first two days of summer at school, the work began and learning recommenced. He completed school June 23rd that year. It's not over until we all say it's over.

May Rufus Be Your Guide