Picture a coach, who’s worked with his team all week to help them prepare to struggle for a victory: picture this same individual being asked to make a “neutral” call, perhaps while watching the slow motion video replay several times.
Obviously, this doesn’t happen in organized athletics, and for good reason: the assignment of the tasks of coaching and refereeing involve a conflict of interests.
The classroom teacher, however, is placed into exactly this paradoxical role. The teacher works all week to ensure that the students are engaged in meaningful academic experiences. Yet the same teacher is then called upon to judge the students.
This creates a counterproductive psychological relation between the students and the teachers. If the students see the teacher as a coach, who’s helping the students to gain academic skills, then the students feel betrayal when the teacher suddenly assumes the role of the umpire and calls the students “out.”
Conversely, if the students see the teacher as a judge who will make the objective calls on the assessment, then the students are less inclined to engage when the teacher coaches them toward achievement.
The solution to this conflict of interest? Regular assessments - the ordinary tests given in a class, not the high stakes college admissions tests - should be designed, administered and graded by someone other than the classroom teacher.
If twice, or four times, or six times, per semester, the students were put through an examination regime by someone who’s not their regular classroom teacher, then the students would see more clearly that the teacher is their coach - the teacher is “on their side” and helping to prepare them to “clear the hurdle” of an upcoming examination.
Otherwise, as is commonly done now, the classroom teacher seems to be the one erecting the barriers for the students to jump: the teacher is seen by the students to be the problem, because the teacher creates, administers, and grades the tests.
In those rare occasions when a teacher is not the author of the assessment - in classes which prepare for AP tests, or for ACT or SAT tests - there is quickly a different relation between student and teacher. It is clear to the students that the teacher is there only to help them, and not to create obstacles.
To ensure meaningful results, the classroom teacher should not see the examination prior to the students taking it, although the classroom teacher should receive a clear description of the test, so as to prepare the students for it.
Such a method for classroom, in-course, assessments would lead to a better relationship between the students and the teacher, a more clear sense in the minds of the students that they are there to prepare for the test, and subsequently to better test results reflecting better academic achievement.
As a side benefit, the test results would be more meaningful: a more accurate and neutral measure of student progress.
[Andrew Smith is a German teacher at Pioneer High School in Ann Arbor, Michigan.]
