For the record:

I'll be a rookie in an English department here in Chesterfield County, Virginia. In providing me with materials to study over the summer, our department head gave me books, manuals, sources of study. She gave me nothing that would allow me to 'teach to the test' that my ninth graders will have to take late spring. She also provided a teacher with whom I have met and worked this summer to help my transition from elementary music to ninth grade English. That teacher has walked me through the year in terms of curriculum--and she has never once alluded to 'teaching to the test.' We've talked about specific units of study, such as Homer and the Odyssey, Elizabethan England, Shakespeare and Romeo and Juliet, and Harper Lee and To Kill a Mockingbird. We've discussed approaches to presenting grammar and ways to get kids writing. I would be surprised--and shocked, quite frankly--if any teacher in that department approached me with ways of 'teaching to the test.'

Nearly all of my time this summer has been focused on preparing for the school year. Yes, we will have that test in the spring, and, yes, it will be based on the Virginia Standards of Learning. But the standards simply provide the framework. I understand that if my students cover the material on which the standards are based, they will have a high chance of succeeding on the test.

Let me give you one specific skill out of many addressed by the standards. Students are to write their essays with variety of sentence stucture, a mark of accomplished writing. One simple skill for helping students develop variety in composing sentences is to have them review an essay, for instance, and count the number of sentences that begin with 'The.' For weaker writers, this procedure provides a red flag that alerts them to restructure sentences that often begin with the definite article.

I do not see teaching students strategies for improving their writing as 'teaching to the test' when the point is to help students develop their writing skills. If an outcome of helping students achieve more variety in their sentence structure is that they get a higher score on the writing part of the test, terrific. Two birds killed with one stone.

As I wrote, the example of sentence variety is just one writing skill of many in the Virginia Standards. Not to teach the standards would be not to do the job for which I was hired. But there is a big difference between teaching the standards the state expects each teacher to address and 'teaching to the test.' I hope that difference is evident.

I rarely hear about some teacher somewhere in our county who is suspected of 'teaching to the test.' It greatly disturbs me that any teacher would do so. But I would hope that all of our teachers in Chesterfield meet and surpass the standards Virginia has set for us.