Teaching for the Test

The author in his classroom at Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology. (Scott Gregory Robinson)

I grabbed lunch with Nancy last summer when she was in Washington for a conference sponsored by the National Board. Flush from rubbing shoulders with several hundred like-minded educators, Nancy was bullish on the board (certified herself in '98, she works with the group in an advisory capacity today).

Teaching is still an undervalued profession, Nancy pointed out, and despite the klieg-light glare of No Child Left Behind, only now are teachers elbowing their way to the education policy table, in part because the profile of the profession has been raised by board-minted leaders. I asked Nancy about good teachers such as Charlene O'Brien who miss the mark.

"We don't teach people how to become" National Board-certified teachers, she replied. "They make themselves." Scoring is not a checklist that identifies elements that are missing, she went on. The board seeks "clear, consistent and convincing" evidence of accomplished practice and student learning. At the end of the day, she concludes, "it's the best we have. Without it, we're back to [standardized] test scores."

AS THIS FALL ROLLED AROUND, MY OWN SCORE WAS THE ONLY ONE I CARED ABOUT. After months of excruciating labor, would I make the cut? The numbers were to be released the Friday before Thanksgiving.

I logged on to the National Board Web site at 5 that morning, to be greeted with a pop-up that asked me to check back later, the online equivalent of a busy signal. Finally, during fifth period at school, I made it through. I was sitting at my desk in the corner of the large double room I shared with Jen Bain. She was presenting a history lesson that held the kids' attention. I'm glad no one was watching me the moment I clicked open the scores. I'm pretty sure I looked as if I'd just been punched in the stomach.

265.

I had missed the passing score by 10 points.

The classroom reeled around me. I skimmed through the report, hoping to spot some kind of mistake. There were the scores on the timed essays I'd written at the computer center in June . . . the essay on literary analysis got 4.0, the highest score . . . here were the portfolio marks . . . 3.125 for the Momaday lesson . . . and then I saw it.

Documented Accomplishments -- 1.0.

The entry about the blog that had energized my teaching, and the canoe project that had in many ways defined it, earned a single point on the four-point scale. According to the scoring guide, that meant there was "little or no evidence of student achievement."

I staggered through the rest of the day. Later, sharing the results on my blog brought an outpouring of grief and affirmation from teachers I know and ones I'd never met.

"Dear Emmet," wrote loyal reader Beth, "This is going to sound crazy, but I started crying when my colleague told me that you did not certify!"

"Lick your wounds for a little while and then get going!" encouraged Marybeth, who suggested I resubmit the low-scoring entry. It wasn't my teaching, she assured me, but how I presented it.

Nancy Flanagan, the Michigan teacher, sent consoling e-mails after reading on the blog that I didn't pass. "I've never met anyone who scored above a 2.75 on every entry and assessment," she wrote. "The thing is, NBC is damned hard. It's rigorous. And it's complicated."

I also got a comment from Charlene, the teacher who had missed the mark the first time. She sent condolences, but also a ray of hope. She passed this time around.

Nancy, who was on a team that developed the board standards for music teachers, defended the process when I voiced frustration over the fact that the scoring system didn't provide feedback to help teachers improve on their next try.

Nancy wrote: "When someone doesn't pass a bar exam, they don't get feedback, they get numbers. It is assumed that the applicant will figure out what needs to be improved, as an aspiring professional." I pointed out that, as good teachers, we would never give our kids a yearlong project without lots of chances for coaching and improvement. That's what real learning is all about.

To that, Nancy replied: "It is an assessment of what teachers know, and their ability to demonstrate evidence of student learning. It pushes teachers to improve through rigorous self-reflection -- a key quality of good teaching practice that is not automatic or intuitive. If NBPTS were to give specific feedback . . . teachers would try to 'fix' what NBPTS specified needed fixing, rather than uncovering what was missing on their own."

The question for me now is whether to descend from the National Board mountain without bagging the summit or to gear up for another try this year. All it will take is redoing one entry. Like Charlene, I could earn the certification on the second try.

The only problem is, I'm not sure how much more reflection I can take. Looking back, I'd be lying if I said the red tape and countless hours spent fussing with a video camera didn't make for a hellish year. The prospect of even more lost weekends with the three-inch-thick instruction manual is daunting. And, on a more fundamental level, I wonder if I really want to be a member of a club that doesn't get the canoe. I know in my gut that the journey my students and I took with that boat was worth it.

So, here I am after 15 years in the English classroom and feeling a little like Macbeth: I've waded too far in blood to turn back now. I think I'll go for it again, and I think I'll pass. Either way, I'm glad I tried. I guess that makes me certifiable, after all.

Emmet Rosenfeld teaches English at Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology and is a teacher/consultant with the Northern Virginia Writing Project. He can be reached at MEmmet.Rosenfeld@fcps.edu.