I am a professional educator with 35 years of experience teaching at various levels of schooling. I have a Ph.D. in Educational Leadership from Emory University and a passion for teaching elementary school. Once again this year I have signed up with Denver Public Schools to teach fourth, fifth and sixth graders in a mixed-level class at Denison Montessori School.
Like public schools all over the USA, Denison is struggling to maintain a quality educational program in an era of assessment madness. The directives of the federal No Child Left Behind emboldened Colorado legislators, who accelerated the accountability program already underway in Colorado and mandated an annual Colorado Student Assessment Program known as CSAP tests. Responding to the pressure to improve CSAP scores, last year the DPS district mandated “Benchmark Tests” every six weeks to track student progress. As a classroom teacher in my seventh year at Denison, I was watching instructional time be squandered so that there was less and less Time To Teach. This year I intended to document that loss.
After a semester, however, it has become increasingly clear that the lost time is better described as less Time to Learn. Students in Montessori education are invited to explore their interests, find their own direction and pursue it with the support and assistance of teachers, as needed. When “instructional” time is squeezed and test preparation is emphasized, the teacher is inclined to mistrust this process of self-direction and, in the interest of successful test performance, begins to direct the learning process in traditional ways. The student’s natural inner drive to learn, to pursue interests, to self-perfect is lost. And with it the possibility of unlocking the human potential that Montessori believed to be the end goal of education.
Ann V. Angell, Ph.D
