To Test 3rd Grade Social Sciences' SOL's, or Not?

FROM: Rich Gillespie

TO: History organizations and colleagues inclined to be fearful of the rumored drop of SOL-testing at the end of 3rd grade history class

SUBJECT: Why the Virginia Department of Education has good reason to question Grade 3 History SOL Testing

The Virginia Department of Education is considering ending the annual 44-question multiple choice SOL test at the end of Grade 3. They are not considering ending having Standards of Learning (SOLs) as guidelines for teaching, nor are they considering the dropping of the teaching of history. They are merely facing the fact that testing what has been “learned” at the end of Grades 1, 2, and 3 in social studies with a 44-question multiple choice test is inadequately informative, penalizes 3rd grade teachers not responsible for Grades 1 and 2 learning, and promotes inevitably some form of “teaching to the test.”

Making the rounds currently are circulars like this one making people fearful—drop 3rd grade SOL testing, and it will mean the beginning of a de-emphasis on history education, they say. “Pass it on to those who may have an interest in supporting history education.” I beg to disagree, suggesting that passing that idea along will continue to weaken the history classroom in Virginia, as has been going on since Governor George Allen’s Education Department instituted the program in the 1990s.

As a 30-year classroom veteran, Agnes-Meyer Teacher of the Year for Loudoun County, Virginia Historical Society Brenton S. Halsey Teacher of the Year, and as a museum educator for working with four school districts the past five years, I would strongly recommend the effort to drop multiple choice testing of the History SOLs at the end of Grade 3 go forward. Based on my experience both as a department chairman/teacher and as a museum educator working with our current crop of history educators, I would even more strongly recommend that we drop currently configured standardized SOL testing in all history classes. This is not because I am lazy, or because I do not believe that teachers need to have some form of oversight. [All of my students passed the SOL test in 11th grade U.S. History my last year of teaching when I had “learned the game.”] It is not because I want history dropped from the curriculum (it won’t be) or that there should be no Standards of Learning to guide history teachers.

Here is why this form of standardized testing should be heavily re-evaluated or dropped:

1. The huge number of tested items forces teachers to go for "coverage" rather than thinking, discussion, and depth--in short, critical thinking and learning are replaced by memorization. Rote learning impresses some, evidently—particularly those who came of age before 1900.

2. Weaker schools have to "teach to the test"; stronger schools find that good teaching has to be replaced by teaching memorizable factoids (i.e., “teach to the test.”).

3. The tests use multiple choice questions that test the simplest form of knowing. Writing is not involved, problem-solving, analysis or synthesis, application, and other higher order thinking skills are largely dodged. If you do not know this, multiple choice tests test better your reading ability than what you have learned. I found them highly unreliable unless coupled with other modes of evaluation as well. [I am lucky to be one who does very well on these types of multiple choice tests. Some of my most brilliant, learned students, however, struggled with them, while "acing" higher order essay-based testing.]
The Commonwealth has neither the grading time nor the extra funds that takes to change the current mode of evaluation.

4. Projects involving the community, field experiences, speakers in class, and other aspects that promote "best practice" historical learning take a back seat to constant factoid teaching. Administrators hate this. Teachers hate this. Parents hate this. Students hate this. If doing this kind of rote learning is so good, why do so few people ever positively remember that aspect of their history class learning? Ask any museum or historic site educator if they think this sort of emphasis through multiple choice testing has increased school interest in extending students’ learning into the community or to history beyond the classroom. You will see that, despite historic site adaptation to SOLs (programs are largely SOL-centric to allow subversive teachers to continue to really teach history), overall, students are being exposed to less real history due to the testing program, not more.

5. Dropping SOL testing of History does not marginalize history, it just refocuses our objective and our mode of teaching back to what we had learned during the educational reform movements of the 1970s, 80s, and 90s. We were on the verge of the best teaching I ever witnessed when Governor Allen introduced this kind of testing. SOLs will not be dropped, a multiple choice test as the way to evaluate what students learn will. Schools will ascertain for themselves how to evaluate whether students have learned along the SOL guidelines.

6. As an 11th grade teacher (both A.P. and Academic), the sheer number of SOLs and parts of SOLs meant total control of every day of your teaching, and even then, it was hard to get them all in with any thoughtful depth.

It does seem odd that I have yet to meet a good social studies teacher (the ones I currently work with) who enthusiastically supports SOL testing in the current format. They will do what they are ordered to, but they usually feel that the current SOL-testing-based program largely forces them to go against the best practice they were trained to do by our universities. For a few marginally competent people it provides escape, cook-book like guidelines, and an escape from the more difficult question of how to make history useful, challenging, thought-provoking, and of value to our country, our economy, and our community. The most common excuse for failure to take field trips, bring community resources into the classroom, teach children better writing and thinking skills, and pursue topics in any depth is, "I can't; I don't have time due to the SOL tests we must prepare for." Overwhelmingly, the schools under the most pressure to do well on the SOLs have the most problem extending learning in depth beyond them. NOTE: The best teachers in Loudoun, Prince William, Fauquier, and Clarke counties are still trying—that’s the good news!

DON'T LET PEOPLE CONVINCE YOU THAT SOL TESTING CORRELATES TO STATE EMPHASIS ON THE SOCIAL SCIENCES. The point was for state control of what every child would learn. In its original incarnation, this meant a sharp shift to the right in the content and away from critical thinking. [Admittedly, the SOL content has been more centered with subsequent revisions to the SOLs).

You may wish to continue support for the SOLs, though they will need both regular updating/review and culling reduce the number to the most crucial content. However, I recommend you support efforts to end multiple-choice based testing at the end of 3rd grade Our current testing does not promote the community's education (unless memorization=education) or social science education goals. It promotes “coverage” and “memorization of factoids.” Please continue to promote quality history teaching in our schools and in our communities! Be a part of the solution!