What is 'Teaching to the Test?'

One of the worst things a teacher can be accused of doing is ‘teaching to the test.’ What does that really mean, though? Think of the weekly classroom spelling test. On Mondays, I introduce the 20 spelling words for the week. Students have the list that they can refer to anytime before the test, the list is right in their spelling text! I even assign homework to make them more familiar with the spelling of the words, the exact same words that will be on the test. On Wednesday, we take a practice spelling test. When Friday comes, I administer the big test pretty much in the same way that we have been practicing them all week. Am I being unethical or inappropriate? Am I teaching to the test?

In their book Deep Curriculum Alignment, English and Steffy tell us that “teachers are hired to teach a curriculum, not a test.” When a state exam like the STAAR test is not aligned to a district’s curriculum, educators are put in a confusing, moral dilemma. What types of activities should they plan for their students that will help them to be successful on the STAAR test? So educators end up using Released STAAR items (or a variation of them) available on the internet. Luckily for teachers in my district, the curriculum IS aligned with the assessment.

I believe that when those teachers are using Released STAAR items, they are attempting to align their instruction with STAAR, to the benefit of their students. This is not ‘teaching to the test,’ it is instructional alignment. Instructional alignment is an example of equitable, excellent classroom instruction. Let me add, however, that by using Released STAAR items, I mean using them in way that is authentic and engaging - not just worksheets.

Just as when a curriculum is back-loaded, or designed around an assessment, teachers who properly link the content of their lessons to STAAR are providing ‘back-loaded instruction.’ Back-loaded instruction is one way that teachers can ensure the success of all of their students. Students need to be familiar with the content AND the context of the exam. This is especially true with at-risk students.

My definition of teaching to the test would include an over-reliance on practice worksheets. Assigning passage after passage isn’t teaching, it’s monitoring and inspecting. No product ever got better through inspection alone. If students clearly aren’t getting it, there’s no need for more inspection, it’s the process that needs to be adjusted. Drill and kill instruction is not child-centered, it’s mind-numbing.

By incorporating back-loaded instruction for at-risk students, teachers can help to level the playing field for those students. The first step in providing back-loaded instruction is to know the assessment, here in Texas, it’s the STAAR test. One needs to REALLY know the exam, not just be familiar with it. Educators need to take the assessments that the students take, analyze them, all of them. We should be so familiar with them that we don’t even need an answer key.

Individual test items should be deconstructed. We want to know exactly what is being asked of the students. What vocabulary is required? What skills do the test-takers need to complete the item? What prior knowledge is needed? In addition, we need to understand the distractors and how they are used.

Armed with valuable testing information, educators now have the ability to develop test items for their students. These teacher-created items can be directly linked to the content being studied in the classroom. Doing so makes the learning authentic, and it will help students to transfer their learning and apply it to testing situations. The more that a teacher can routinely integrate aligned practice items, the less surprises there will be for their students on testing day. This is the essence of aligned instruction.

Aligning instruction is good teaching. It helps to prepare students to handle challenging assessments and to not be blindsided by them. Aligning instruction is not ‘teaching to the test,’ it is equitable, quality teaching.