One Day in April: The Inequitable Impact of Assessment & Accountability in Low-Income Schools During the COVID-19 Pandemic and Beyond

By: Kristin Valle Geren

One day in April, I hurried my fourth grade class upstairs after lunch to quickly take a bathroom break (there’s no time for that in a day jam-packed with required instructional minutes, especially when you work at a school consistently labeled as in need of improvement     ) before our visitors arrived. I glanced at my watch and realized we had about two minutes before “showtime”: today was state walkthrough day. I had 10 minutes – or less – to prove I was doing everything possible to prepare students for the Florida Standards Assessment (FSA), our statewide assessment.      

Due to our classification as a “low-performing school,” representatives from the state’s      Bureau of School Improvement, along with district and school teams, would walk through classrooms to see if we were preparing students for FSA. I had been told once during another state walkthrough that “schools like yours don’t have time for anything else.” My students and I would be deemed successful if – and only if – there was a clear connection between instruction in my classroom and the way literacy is measured on the test.

All of this was running through my mind as I glanced toward the door and saw Isaiah* crying at his desk. I hugged him (ignoring COVID safety protocols) and ushered him into the hallway. Suddenly, I saw blood begin to seep through his mask, realizing he had a bloody nose. At the same time, I saw the evaluators with their checklists huddled together down the hallway.

My principal made eye contact and walked down to my classroom, calling for the school nurse on her walkie, while I continued to hug Isaiah and attempted to keep the other students calm.

Today was Isaiah’s first day back to school; his mother had died the week before. This was complicated by past trauma he had endured and the fact that he was already living in foster care with a relative and hadn’t seen his mom in a few months. The rest of the children in my class were concerned about Isaiah. My principal and the school nurse took Isaiah and I walked back into my classroom and locked eyes with15 faces staring back at me. With a deep breath, I assured them Isaiah was being taken care of and we took a moment to regroup.

Minutes later, the group with the clipboards walked in. No time to waste at “a school like mine”…they had to make sure these kids were getting ready for that test.

Within the context of a global pandemic and amid cries of “learning loss” (Strauss, 2021) and the need to“close gaps,” this story illustrates just one example of how accountability pressures inequitably impacted teachers and students in schools serving low income and historically underserved communities. My “low-performing” school received a school grade of a D in 2018-19. This meant more accountability, more pressure, more visitors. Additionally, our school mostly serves students who are experiencing economic instability (97% free and reduced lunch) and the population is predominantly Black (55%) and Hispanic (30%).

In Florida, FSA was “optional” for students during the 2020-21 school year, but still administered and ultimately used to calculate school grades and teacher accountability scores (Solocheck, 2021; Spar, 2021). The pressures of assessments like FSA are intensified at low-income schools. We historically receive more points for our school grade through “learning gains” than through “proficiency” (Florida Department of Education, 2019). But since testing was canceled in 2020 due to COVID, there were limited gains to be earned (Florida Department of Education, 2021). Research has shown the day-to-day work of teachers and school leaders changes as a result of accountability policies and that this can be particularly harmful in schools serving communities with high rates of poverty (Moon et.al, 2003).

While teachers and students navigated turbulent school reopening plans, pressures of “closing gaps” and raising school grades were exacerbated. Instead of tending to the needs of students (and teachers) as humans, state and district leaders and politicians focused on the need to close “gaps” intensified by the pandemic. In one Florida school district’s reopening plan, this was used as a rationale to encourage families to send students back to in-person learning as soon as possible:

“There is little doubt that this worldwide pandemic, and its resulting school closures, have widened and highlighted this achievement gap and is wildly unacceptable. Returning students to brick-and-mortar classrooms is a major step to helping students bridge the gap and preparing them for jobs that do not even exist today.”

However, as Rachael Gabriel argues, this “loss of learning” narrative is actually a “..loss of a previously imagined trajectory leading to a previously imagined future. Learning is never lost, though it may not always be ‘found’ on pre-written tests of pre-specified knowledge or preexisting measures of pre-coronavirus notions of achievement” (Gabriel, 2020). Nevertheless, testing to identify these “gaps” began immediately. This data was used in state and district data meetings in order to make projections and action plans about FSA proficiency. Color-coded spreadsheets identified students who were “on track” and in, what researchers have called      “educational triage,” additional support was identified for select students (Sparks, 2012).      

Although leaders and policymakers claimed to acknowledge the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, the FSA still held students (and teachers) accountable for the same grade-level expectations. This seems especially unfair when considering what living through a pandemic meant. For example, in my classroom, during the first nine weeks of school (45 school days) learning was interrupted for 30 days: 8 days of standardized testing, 20 days for quarantine, and 2 days of “optional e-learning” due to a hurricane. For students like Isaiah, even more days were missed in response to traumatic events. Isaiah was not alone, especially in schools serving communities where healthcare access may be limited, where adults were forced to go back to work earlier, and COVID-19 racial disparities prevailed (Wood, 2020).

In a post-COVID world, we have to do better. We have to rethink how we measure success. We have to reimagine the purpose of school. We have to honor the moments when a teacher just needs to comfort an Isaiah.

*Isaiah is a pseudonym

References

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Ingram, F. (2019, July 2). Florida’s school grades are really measuring family income on an A to F scale. Tampa Bay Times. https://www.tampabay.com/opinion/columns/floridas-school-grades-are-really-measuring-family-income-on-an-a-to-f-scale-column-20190702/#

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Moon, T. R., Callahan, C. M., & Tomlinson, C. A. April 28, 2003. Effects of state testing programs on elementary schools with high concentrations of student poverty–Good news or bad news? Current Issues in Education, 6(8).