Thoughts on ACT Aspire Testing

This is not a letter to protest standardized testing, or grade level standards. Rather, this is a letter to advocate for young students who do not yet have the ability to do so themselves.

A couple of weeks ago, our district administered the ACT Aspire Test to our students. At my school, that included students in grades 3, 4, and 5.

We (teachers and administrators) had little information about the test content or format prior to administering the test. Therefore, we could not prepare our young students for what they would experience during the testing.

Our students took the Reading and Math portions of the ACT Aspire. I teach Math to 4^th graders so I will limit my comments to that portion of the test.

From the middle of August to the end of April, my students have been taught to take their time and to think through problems, to read and re-read carefully, and to take problems step by step. “Read and Think” is central to everything we do in Math class. We have worked through various Math topics and varying levels of problems throughout the school year. And as is the case in most 4^th grade classrooms, some students were more successful than others.

What my students faced on that testing day were 31 word problems to solve in 55 minutes. Very few of my students were able to be successful. Although I did not read any specific problems, I do know from seeing the test booklets as I walked around the room, that several of the problems had lengthy sets of data accompanying them. To put this in perspective, my 9 and 10 year old children were expected to read a problem, decide what to do to solve the problem, discern which pieces of the data to use, perform the computation, and then select or write an answer. And in order to successfully complete the test, all this had to be done in less than 2 minutes per problem. My students certainly did not have time to “read and think”. I am most certain that many adults would not be able to complete the test successfully.

The scores, of course, have not yet been reported. But the results for my students were immediate. Some of my best and brightest students were devastated by a feeling of failure because they could not complete the test.

This is not what assessment should be for young children.