Ah, the harbingers of Spring in South Dakota; it says it’s spring on the calendar regardless of what Mother Nature says, the “slow down for the plow” signs have not yet been taken down just in case of a late April blizzard, orange cones are up and road construction has begun, cattle are beginning to dot the fields and early bird farmers are out tilling the earth, also standardized testing is set to begin in South Dakota classrooms.
When I began teaching at Mitchell High School in 1982, the standardized tests given every spring were the Stanford Achievement Tests. English, Math, Social Studies and Science were the tested subjects and, at MHS, Social Studies was always the high flier with students scoring the best in that subject. That was always a point of pride for me as a social studies teacher. Standardized tests were always given in the third week of April.
I was one of those teachers who administered the various standardized tests kids were required to take. Students had to mark their exam papers with a number two pencil. If a student used anything else, all of their answers may have been correct, but the student would appear to be a complete idiot because none of their responses would register when scored by the machine. As a proctor, I wasn’t allowed to answer any questions from students about the test. They were completely on their own. Although I can’t remember the year, I do remember the question on a particular Stanford Test from decades ago. The kids were given a picture of the Isthmus of Panama and asked to name the international canal that ran through it. Now, there were no place names on a map. It would be like if you were given a blank map of the United States with the states outlined and asked to pick out Delaware. Below the picture, kids had four canals to pick from on this multiple choice question. The fly in the buttermilk was the Panama Canal wasn’t one of the answers. When I was a teacher constructing my own tests, I too would occasionally get too smart for my britches and accidentally have a question with no right answer. The Stanford people did that inadvertently that year with that specific question on their test. I knew there was no correct answer. The kids knew there was no right answer. If they put down any one of the four other canals listed, their answer would be wrong and if they left it blank that would be wrong too. It was frustrating for all of us. Sometime later that spring, Stanford acknowledged their mistake and adjusted every student’s score accordingly.
After the Stanford Tests fell out of favor, eventually the Smarter Balance Tests came into being. Students at Mitchell High School knew these tests were a farce. Not because of the test itself or the content of the questions, but because the tests were meaningless to the students. Those standardized tests meant zilch to their class rank, GPA, athletic or activity eligibility, or grade in any of the courses they were taking at MHS etc. So, what was their incentive to do their best? The short and honest answer was – absolutely nothing.
Representative Tony Venhuizen (Republican, District 13 Lincoln/Minnehaha Counties) introduced a bill in this 2024 legislative session, House Bill 1002, that would have made the ACT test mandatory for all high school juniors in South Dakota. That would have been in addition to any other achievement testing that schools chose to do in the Junior year of high school. The school district would pay the fee for the ACT testing and the schools would be reimbursed by the State of South Dakota for the cost of those tests. Students on an Individualized Educational Plan (IEP), typically Special Education kids, would be exempt from the ACT testing requirement. Approximately 59% of high school juniors currently take the ACT test, some take it multiple times on their own dime in order to get to the magic score of 24. That’s the score that qualifies high school students for the South Dakota Opportunity Scholarships. The average ACT score in South Dakota is 21. A perfect ACT score is 36.
Dr. Joseph Graves, formerly the Mitchell School District 17-2 School District Superintendent and now the South Dakota Secretary of Education, saw the wisdom of Representative Venhuizen’s plan. In his role as the Secretary of Education, and with Governor Noem’s acquiescence, Dr. Graves accepted the proposal for implementation in the spring of 2025. Representative Venhuizen then asked that his own bill be tabled, since his goal had already been achieved administratively. This year is the last for the Smarter Balance tests in South Dakota schools.
There are some things that schools could do to improve student performance. For some kids, food is an issue. There are free and reduced lunches for those who qualify, but not all who are entitled to take part actually partake in those programs. Some don’t participate out of ignorance of their eligibility, but most don’t because of pride. The continuation of the Covid era program of free meals would give all students the sustenance their minds and bodies need to learn.
Second, schools should ban the bane of educators everywhere and get rid of cell phones in classrooms! Already three-fourths of the schools K-12 in the United States prohibit the use of cell phones in some classrooms but only 43% of high schools report doing so. Florida became the first state to ban cell phones at all grade levels. Utah, Indiana and Oklahoma were considering doing so in bills before their legislatures this year too. A 2019 study found that 20% of a student’s time in class is wasted on cell phone use. Some of that use is simply frivolous like checking email, surfing the web and texting when they should be doing something else. Some of that wasted time is when an instructor allows students to use their cell phone to complete an assignment and then kids being kids get distracted by TikTok or other things. A study in Norway of middle school students found that banning cell phones led to higher grades, less bullying and deeper interpersonal connections and friendships. As a former teacher I can tell you, the less kids are distracted the more they learn.
I know what you’re thinking, “You’re the teacher. Do your job and make kids put them away or, as a last resort, take the phone away from them!” I routinely had classrooms with over thirty students. One class had thirty-six kids. There weren’t enough desks for everybody. Kids were draped over the counter and sitting on the floor, as though it were a nineteen sixties sit-in. There’s a lot of sheriffing involved in that kind of situation and kids give up their cell phones about as willingly as they would give up their right arm. Clinical psychologist Roni Cohen-Sandler has a book all about this phenomenon called, “Anything But My Phone Man”.
Although they’re not popular, school uniforms improve achievement as well. School uniforms make everyone – well, uniform. It takes away the shame of not being “in”. I recall in the 1980’s the absolute shellacking that girls got if they weren’t wearing Jordache Jeans, which were in style then but tremendously expensive. Other fashions, brands and styles have come and gone but all have brought the same feelings of inferiority to those who can’t afford them and bullying from those who can. School uniforms put everyone on a level playing field and so school becomes more about education rather than fashion drama and other side issues. I know of more than one student who wore one set of clothes out of the house to school in order to please Mom and Dad but changed at school to be “in” and/or to avoid bullying who would then change back to the parental pleasing clothes after school to go home again.
I think Representative Venhuizen has the germ of a good idea, but the ACT testing approach is too narrow. Instead, I believe there should be a hybrid system where high school juniors can choose their assessment. In my proposal, the college bound would take the ACT as Representative Venhuizen has recommended. However, students should also have a choice of taking the Accuplacer, which is the test used for admission to South Dakota Technical Colleges or the ASVAB, which is the test administered to those wishing to volunteer for military service. However, in order to meet the goals of assessing school performance, all students would have to take one of those three exams – again exempting those on Individual Education Plans in Special Education. That way the tests used to measure whether South Dakota schools and educators are doing what we expect them to do have meaning, not only for the public but for every student in a high school no matter what their post high school goals are.
If your child is taking a standardized test this month make sure they do these things; get a good night’s sleep the day before the test, have them eat a good and nutritious breakfast, make sure they have the proper supplies (in the old days that was a #2 pencil) and assure them that all you expect of them is their best – as opposed to a certain level of performance (an A grade or a score, like at least a 24 on the ACT for example). I always told kids they need not be “the best” but simply their best. That’s because there is only one “the best”. We can argue, using basketball to illustrate my point, whether “the best” is Michael Jordan or LeBron James or Wilt Chamberlain or Kareem Abdul Jabbar or whomever, but there still is only one, “the best”. Returning to the issue of testing and students, if someone has truly given their best, then that should be good enough and all one could reasonably expect from that person.
In any event, while these tests – especially next year with the advent of the ACT as the test high school juniors take – are important and have meaning, not doing well on them is not the end of the world. After all, when Albert Einstein was 17 he was graded on a 1-6 scale with 1 being the highest and 6 the lowest. At the age of most modern high school juniors by the time they take their standardized tests, Einstein got sixes (the lowest score possible) in Geometry, Descriptive Geometry, Algebra and Physics while receiving a five in Chemistry.
The moral of the story for students is this; do your best on these standardized tests but if your score isn’t as high as you’d like, think about Albert Einstein as a teenager. His low scores were not ideal, but things worked out all right for Einstein in the long run. Effort, a good work ethic, determination, perseverance and performance will trump a so-so academic record every time. Do your best, it’s all you can do.