By Susan Ohanian
Last May, in “Test Items Destroy Love of Literature,” (http://www. substancenews. com/Mambo /content/view/131/81), I stated my intentions to out popular authors who allow their work to be used on high stakes standardized tests. Authors, publishers, and professional organizations. I am appalled that my own professional organization, the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE), gave permission for an article appearing in its journals to be put on the California Exit Exam: “Acting is my thing,” from “Acting up across the curriculum: Using creative dramatics to explore adolescent literature,” The ALAN Review 24(3): 42-46.

It’s Past Time for Naomi Shihab Nye to Reclaim Her Work

In February 2005, Houston Chronicle columnist Rick Casey asked his friend Naomi Shihab Nye, a finalist for the National Book Award, four time winner of the Pushcart Prize for small press literature, guest on two PBS poetry specials and on A Prairie Home Companion, how she felt about having one of her essays used in the TAKS test. Casey notes: “Her first response was that she was honored to have one of her essays chosen, and that it actually helped her work with a group of students at George West High School in South Texas last spring.”

When Casey sent Nye the questions used on the TKS, she admitted, “It reminded me of the trouble I always had with standardized tests. . . .Almost every question has more than one ‘right’ answer.” Nye acknowledged, “Out of five questions the kids were supposed to answer, I couldn’t answer three.”

Nye didn’t mention that New York state would be using one of her poems, “Morning Glory,” on their exit exam and that Ohio had already used another on their exam. Someone needs to tell Nye to think about the high stakes involved for students in Texas and California.

The following was used in the New York Regents High School Examination Comprehensive Examination in English, Session Two, administered on Wednesday, August 17, 2005.

Read Nye’s poem through the eyes of a youth knowing his high school diploma depends on answering the questions correctly:

MORNING GLORY
1 The faces of the teachers
2 know we have failed and failed
3 yet they focus beyond, on the windowsill
4 the names of distant galaxies
5 and trees.
6 We have come in dragging.
7 If someone would give us
8 a needle and thread, or send us
9 on a mission to collect something
10 at a store, we could walk for twenty years
11 sorting it out. How do we open,
12 when we are so full?
13 The teachers have more faith than we do.
14 They have organized into units.
15 We would appreciate units
16 if we gave them a chance.
17 Nothing will ever again be so clear.
18 The teachers look at our papers
19 when they would rather be looking at
20 a fine scallop of bark
21 or their fathers and mothers thin as lace,
22 their own teachers remaining in front
23 of a class at the back of their minds.
24 So many seasons of rain, sun, wind
25 have crystallized their teachers.
26 They shine like something on a beach.
27 But we don’t see that yet.
28 We’re fat with binders and forgetting.
29 We’re shaping the name of a new love
30 on the underside of our thumb.
31 We’re diagnosing rumor and trouble
32 and fear. We hear the teachers
33 as if they were far off, speaking
34 down a tube. Sometimes
35 a whole sentence gets through.
36 But the teachers don’t give up.
37 They rise, dress, appear before us
38 crisp and hopeful. They have a plan.
39 If cranes can fly 1,000 miles
40 or that hummingbird return from Mexico
41 to find, curled on its crooked fence, a new vine,
42 surely. We may dip into the sweet
43 Together, if we hover long enough.
—Naomi Shihab Nye (from Fuel, 1998 Boa Editions, Ltd.)

1. According to the poet, a characteristic displayed by teachers is
(1) happiness (3) determination
(2) pessimism (4) inattention

2. The word “dragging” (line 6) suggests that the students are
(1) reluctant (3) angry
(2) afraid (4) disgusted

3. The poet uses the word “open” (line 11) to indicate becoming
(1) eligible (3) employable
(2) receptive (4) satisfied

4. According to the poet, teachers in the classroom model their educational practices on
(1) recent studies
(2) their best students
(3) their former teachers
(4) scientific theories

5. Lines 28 through 32 are used to present examples of things that
(1) are a basis for lessons
(2) keep students in school
(3) cause sibling rivalry
(4) distract students from learning

16. The poet mentions the experience of cranes (line 39) and the hummingbird (line 40) to
reinforce the theme that
(1) persistence will produce results
(2) travel will enhance learning
(3) sweetness will improve the environment
(4) friendship will promote love

How do you think any test taker will react upon encountering Naomi Shihab Nye’s work later in life?

New York Interrogations

Here are other luminaries who have recently allowed their work to be used to interrogate young people on New York State’s Exit Exam: Remember, this exam decides whether a kid gets a high school diploma.

• John Updike. excerpted from “Learn a Trade,” Trust Me, 1987. Alfred A. Knopf
• Kenneth Koch. “To My Father’s Business.” from Poetry, January 2000
• Debra Allbery. “Assembler” from Walking Distance, 1991. University of Pittsburgh Press
• Robert James Waller. from Just Beyond the Firelight, 1988. Iowa State University Press
• Sharon Olds. from The Wellspring, 2001. Alfred A. Knopf
• Richard Wilbur, “In Trackless Woods”

Perhaps we should rejoice that in placing such an emphasis on living poets the New York Regents are pushing teachers to broaden the canon beyond Wordsworth and Shelley. Nonetheless, I look at the questions and wonder how anyone can justify using this as the roadblock to a high school diploma. How many members of the Fortunate 500 read poetry? How many volumes does Bill Gates’ poetry library hold?

Maya Angelou: The Testmakers’ favorite writer

Above: Maya Angelou is a favorite of test makers, but no one has ever asked whether multiple-choice testing is the best way to develop a love of literature in children and teenagers.

Surely Maya Angelou must be the testmakers’ favorite writer. We find Angelou’s work on the California exit exam, the Arkansas ACTAAP, the Ohio graduation tests, and the Kentucky high school test. Even worse, she has granted permission for her work to be used on the Massachusetts exit exam retest, meaning that students who have already failed the test are trying again to earn a high school diploma, and to do this they must successfully answer questions about Angelou’s “Those Who Really Know Teach” from Even the Stars Look Lonesome. Angelou is allowing her work to be inflicted on the truly desperate.

Angelou’s work has also appeared on Kentucky’s high school test. In Massachusetts, 7th graders were interrogated about Angelou’s “I Love the Look of Words” from Soul Looks Back in Wonder by Tom Feelings. And so on and so on.

The Literature of Inquisition

Here is a bare bones sample of children’s literature plundered so that corporate-politicos can rank and sort kids and declare public schools a failure. Substance readers are entreated to send in more examples. We must document what Standardistos are doing and we must call on authors to stop letting their work be so defiled.
Grade 2
— Mississippi:
Ruth Krauss, The Carrot Seed, illustrations by Crockett Johnson
Grade 3
— Massachusetts:
Patricia McKissack, “Now That I Have a Green Thumb” from A Piece of the Wind.
Jack Prelutsky, “The Snail” and “The Packrat”
Arnold Lobel, “The Hen and the Apple Tree”
Tomie DePola, “The Secret Place”
Eileenn Spinelli, “Apartment Building”
Judith Viorst, “Since Hanna Moved Away”
— Minnesota
James Howe, Bunnicula–Fun Book
Seymour Simon, From Pets in a Jar
Grade 4
— Arkansas:
Paula Danziger, Amber Brown Goes Fourth.
— Florida
Items from Highlights, Cricket, Boy’s Life
— Massachusetts:
Charlotte Zolotow, “People”
Paul Fleischman, “Gonzolo”
Jane Yolen, “Homework”
Jean Craighead George, “I Hole Up in a Snowstorm” from My Side of the Mountain
— Michigan:
Kate DiCamillo, Because of Winn-Dixie
— Washington
Bonnie Pryor, “The Plum Tree War”
Seymour Simon, “The Gray Whale in Winter” from Winter Across America
Felice Holman, “They’re Calling” from At the Top of My Voice and Other Poems
Grade 5
— Illinois:
Cynthia Rylant, An Angel for Solomon Singer (17 questions)
— Minnesota
Robert Newton Peck, “Trig”
Judy Blume, Otherwise Known as Sheila the Great
Eve Merriam, “If Only I Could Tell You”
Karla Kuskin, “Spring”
Bobbi Katz “Spring Is”
N. M. Bodecker, “Good-Bye My Winter Suit, spring!
Grade 6
— California:
May Swenson, “Water Picture” from Nature: Poems Old and New
Grade 7
— Massachusetts:
Frances Goodrich and Albert Hackett, TheDiary of Anne Frank
Eudora Welty, “The Little Store”
Donald Hall, “Oxcart Man”
Malcolm X as told to Alex Haley, The Autobiography of Malcolm X
— Minnesota
Don Marquis, “the lesson of the moth” from archy and mehitabel
— Washington
Bailey White, “Leave Taking” from Mama Makes Up Her Mind and Other
Dangers of Southern Living
Joseph Bruchac, “Birdfoot’s Grampa” from Entering Onowdaga
Grade 8
— California:
N. Scott Momaday, House Made of Dawn
— Delaware:
Martin Luther King, “I Have a Dream”
— Illinois
James Thurber, “Doc Marlowe”
— Maryland:
Kristine O’Connell George , “School Photographer”
— Pennsylvania
Madeleine L’ Engle, “Meet the Austins” from Meet the Austins
— Virginia
Robert Cormier, “The Gum Caper” from I Have Words to Spend
Stephen Bodio, “The Eagle People”

High School: In many states this is or is becoming a high stakes exit exam. Note that a Massachusetts retest is for students who have failed the 10th grade exam at least once. They cannot get a high school diploma unless they pass a retest, so authors allowing their work to be used on such retests are letting that work be used for the most disreputable of purposes.
— Alaska
Farley Moway, “Looking for Owls,” from The Dog Who Wouldn’t Be
— California
Gretel Ehrlich, The Solace of Open Spaces
Robert Hayden, “The Winter Sundays” from The Complete Poems of Robert Hayden
Cathy Song, “The Grammar of Silk” from School Figures
— Delaware
Langston Hughes, “Daybreak in Alabama” from Collected Poems
— Florida
Russell Baker, Growing Up
John Haines, “Snow”
Thomas Lux “Tarantulas on the Lifebuoy” from Half-Promised Land
— Georgia
Ralph Ellison, Invisible Man
James Thurber, “The Unicorn in the Garden”
Emily Dickinson, “‘Hope’ is the thing with feathers”
Walt Whitman, “I Hear America Singing”)
— Kentucky
Maya Angelou, “Complaining” from Wouldn’t Take Nothing for My Journey Now
— Maryland
Karen Hesse, “Dust and Rain,” from Out of the Dust
Cynthia Rylant “Checkouts,” from A Could of Kooks and Other Stories About Love
— Massachusetts exit exam retests
W. P. Kinsella, Joy in Dyersville
Sandra Cisneros, “Eleven”from Woman Hollering Creek
William Shakespeare, “A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” Act I, Scene ii (with 17 footnotes of definitions)
Russell Baker, Growing Up
Tennessee Williams, “The Glass Menagerie”
— Michigan
Malcolm X and Alex Haley, “Malcom X” from The Autobiography of Malcolm X
Thomas Friedman, “My favorite Teacher”
— Mississippi
Byrd Baylor, “I’m In Charge of Celebrations”
Nixon Waterman, “Far From The Madding Crowd” from A Rose to the Living and Other Poems
— Ohio
Gary Soto “The Bike” from A Summer Life
Thomas Friedman, “My Favorite Teacher”
Bill Bryson, Made in America
Debora Marsh, “My Desk” from Poetry Slam
Naomi Shihab Nye, “My Father and the Figtree” from Words Under the Words: Selected Poems
Malcolm X with the assistance of Alex Haley, “Saved,” in The Autobiography of Malcolm X
Maya Angelou, “Caged Bird” from Shaker, Why Don’t You Sing?
Andrei Codrescu, “Speech to the New Americans,” from Road Scholar: Coast to Coast Late in the Century
David Quammen, “Something to Crow About” from Natural Acts
— Oregon
Gary Paulsen, Woodsong
— Pennsylvania
Mary Oliver, “Goldfinches,” from New and Selected Poems
— Tennessee
Alfred Lord Tennyson, “The Eagle”
— Virginia
Robert Cormier,”The Year I Drove Through the Car Wash” from I have Words to Spend
Lucy Tapahonso “All I Want” (Professor, American Indian Studies, University of Arizona)
Tennessee Williams, “The Glass Menagerie”
Elizabeth Bishop, “The Armadillo” [3 footnotes]
Al Gore, “The Wasteland” from Earth in the Balance
A. E. Housman, “To an Athlete Dying Young”
N. Scott Momaday., “Riding is an Exercise of the Mind,” from In the Presence of the Sun: Stories and Poems
Ralph Waldo Emerson, from Nature
Dylan Thomas, “Do Not Go Gentle into that Good Night”
Robert Hayden, “Those Winter Sundays” from Collected Poems of Robert Hayden
Bailey White, ““Someday the Old Junker Will Be a Neat Car Again” from Mama Makes
Up Her Mind
William Faulkner, from “A Rose for Emily”
Arthur Miller, from “Death of a Salesman”
— Washington
Gwendolyn Brooks, “Building” from The Near-Johannesburg Boy

Above: Gary Paulson’s books are used often in high-stakes tests, an irony because many of his books are about young people who face real world odds and overcome them.

The Agony of Authentic Literature

For years, whole language adherents have advocated bringing what they call authentic text into classrooms. And there is no question but putting real books into kids’ hands has been a good thing. For a reminder of what authorless, bland, voiceless, numbing institutional prose looks like, take a gander at the California exit exam released items for 2005; of 16 passages, only three come with any publishing permissions. Most are authorless: nasty little pieces with subjects ranging from the pros and cons of vitamin supplements to becoming a falconer to the early years of the film industry to a tribute to California. Brings back memories of those old McCrab-Crab readers and the SRA cards. Ironically, these gutless passages now used to assess whether California students are worthy of a diploma violate the very rules of paragraph writing relentlessly hawked by Standardistos. For example, one ten-paragraph essay has an average paragraph length of 2.7 sentences.

The Illinois Prairie State Exam also offers voiceless prose but doesn’t pretend it is offering actual literature. The Prairie State Exam released items are modeled not on poetry or literary essays but on ‘real life’ readings on practical topics an adult needs to know about. So we get fire regulations and a memo about computerized information systems, both written in awful institutional prose but in keeping with what’s in the real world. At least such a test can be justified on the grounds of usefulness: the average person has greater need to understand fire codes than the 17 footnotes of A Midsummer Night’s Dream. The danger comes, of course, when tests drive curriculum.

We rightfully scorn institutional prose, but the alternative is worse. When we parse and dissect a Jack Prelutsky poem or Russell Baker’s lovely memoir, we turn these works into weapons of mass destruction against children. Not only is what’s read deformed, so, too, is the person reading it. Standardistos like to brag that tests drive curriculum, so that if the tests issued by the State ask eight multiple choice questions about a Prelutsky poem, then the classroom teacher will ask 3,874. The Catch-22 of a test-driven curriculum is that if there is no poetry on the test, then third graders will be denied their literary legacy. And if there is poetry, those same third graders will be engrained with a stunted view of what poetry is.

We all know that a test is more than documents shipped out by CTB McGraw-Hill. Writing after the administration of the MCAS, Boston Globe columnist, Joan Vennochi discussed her own fourth grader’s negative reaction to the “open response part of the language arts test.” Puzzled about why the child was so upset, Joan got hold of the poem used, “Homework” by Jane Yolen. She concluded that the poem is straightforward and there was nothing particularly tricky or unfair about the test questions. Besides that, it expresses a point of view very similar to her daughter’s. Vennochi began to realize that her daughter’s feelings about the high stakes test smothered any ability to appreciate the poem.

Vennochi contacted Jane Yolen to see how she feels about her poem being used on the MCAS. Yolen replied that teachers “use my poems all the time. That doesn’t bother me. The MCAS bothers me. They put too much pressure on kids.” Boston Globe readers learned that to avoid the MCAS, Yolen’s eight-year-old granddaughter attends a private elementary school.

How fortunate for that one eight-year-old. We could wish this freedom from the state-inflicted pressure cooker for all children. And we can wonder: If Jane Yolen thinks the MCAS is so terrible, why does she allow MCAS producers to plunder her work? This is a question we need to put to Jane Yolen and to all the other children’s authors who sell children’s literary heritage for the 30 pieces of silver allotted by test publishers. Let’s remind these authors that children get only one chance at childhood.