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It is the fourth day of school. A second grade classroom in the Readington school system has an atmosphere that is quiet and tense. The teacher, or, that is, the proctor, has just read the sample question for the children taking the CTB McGraw-Hill InView test. The test is said to provide an assessment of cognitive abilities, and, perhaps more importantly to our school leadership, it is said to anticipate achievement scores for the CTB McGraw-Hill TerraNova test that the same students will take later in the school year. The teachers, or, rather, the proctors, have been instructed not to refer to this test as a test, according to a letter sent home to Readington parents. Still, the second grade students sitting at their desks in neat production line rows with neat production line bubble sheets to be filled out with nicely sharpened number two pencils must have little doubt about what this is all about. If it quacks like a duck…

The children are filling out the bubble for the answer to the sample question. It is just a sample question to get them in the habit of filling out the right bubble, so the answer is obvious. Or, is it? The proctor reads from the script that the students should have filled out bubble "D". Suddenly there is confusion. One child bursts into tears. It seems that the answer to the sample question was not as obvious to a second grader as the writers of the test supposed. Many of the children are now busy erasing their incorrect answer, their confidence shaken and their questions about the process multiplying. The teacher sticks to the script and moves on, rolling her eyes to herself.

On this fourth day of school in the Readington Township second grade classrooms the next few hours will be spent filling out bubbles. The teachers make some mental notes. At first, the students hunker down and make a strong effort to do their best. However, this InView test is purposely written to be too difficult for these students. There are concepts underlying many questions that have not yet been introduced to these children. In order to form a bell curve of test score percentile results, it is necessary for some of the questions to be too difficult for many of the children. The point is not to determine what these children know. The point is to compare the scores of these children to other test takers in the country. By statistical comparison and association, the CTB McGraw Hill company believes it can predict how these children will perform on other tests and where the cognitive strengths and weaknesses of the children lie. The teacher notes that after about half the test worth of filling in bubbles to answer many questions that are too difficult, too vague, or simply mind-numbing, the eyes of the children have glazed over. The answers to the questions are coming faster to the students because they are now simply guessing.

Parents who inquired about the test at the dinner table later that night had a variety of responses from the children, none of them positive. Some children were quiet about the whole affair; unsure of their performance and confused about the process. Others were indignant, recognizing the futility of the exercise and admitting that they simply guessed at the answers after losing interest. The people at CTB McGraw Hill who wrote this test may very well be able to predict student performance and cognitive ability with perfect accuracy. However, the people who wrote the test were not concerned with the school day after the test. Our Readington teachers are now faced with damage control in their classrooms. Bruised egos, shaken confidence, sullen feelings and a new-found fear of test taking must all be faced by a teacher who was asked on the fourth day of school to put aside her excitement for the new school year, put aside her concern for the attitudes and self esteem of her students, and interrupt the momentum of the first week of school in order to become a robotic test proctor. Welcome to second grade, children. Next up: CTB McGraw-Hill TerraNova test.