Too many tests, too little art
equals an imbalance, dancer says
Staff photo/Anthony Brino
Dancer and arts advocate Karen Montanaro at the Wintergreen Arts Center in Presque Isle. “We need to look closely at what each child needs to fly. I say fly, because flight depends on the balance of oppositional forces.”
By Anthony Brino
Staff Writer
As school districts navigate a maze of government testing mandates, Maine performance artist Karen Montanaro is thinking about how to save and support the creativity of youth.
A resident of the southern Maine town of Casco, Montanaro visited Presque Isle last week to hold dance classes with grade-schoolers and share her story of finding her potential through the arts, an opportunity she thinks is being neglected in modern education.
“Why are the arts still marginalized in public education?” Montanaro, an accomplished ballet dancer, wondered in a talk at the Wintergreen Arts Center. The problem, she argued, is that “we’re looking at only the things we can see — the budget, the standards, the curriculum, the Common Core subjects. The missing piece could be somewhere else.”
Thirteen years after the No Child Left Behind law required states to measure student progress with standardized tests, Montanaro’s frustration with the education bureaucracy’s detrimental impact to meaningful learning is shared among parents, teachers and officials in the federal government.
“If our kids had more free time at school, what would you want them to do with it?” asked President Barack Obama in a Facebook video. “A) Learn to play a musical instrument?
B) Study a new language? C) Learn how to code HTML? D) Take more standardized tests?”
The typical public school student takes 112 government-mandated standardized tests between pre-kindergarten and 12th grade, with more than 20 hours a year spent taking standardized tests from grades 3 through 11, according to a study by the Council of Great City Schools.
The Obama Administration wants to change that, suggesting that states place a limit on testing, to no more than 2 percent of classroom time, a bit less than the current 2.3 percent average for eighth graders, according to the study.
“We’re going to work with states, school districts, teachers, and parents to make sure that we’re not obsessing about testing,” Obama said, “to make sure we are preparing our kids for a lifetime of success.”
For Montanaro, who grew up in western Massachusetts and moved to Portland in her senior year of high school, reaching success in school and as an adult was linked with the development of a passion for creativity.
“When I was 12, I was a mediocre student and studied ballet once a week half-heartedly for four years. The first year we studied how to waltz. Second year we added arms. In the middle of both those years, I really wanted to quit. My mother wouldn’t let me, saying ‘You’re committed to a year, you can quit in the spring,’” said Montanaro.
“But in the spring, we had the recital, and it was enough for year three. One magical day in the fourth year, I waltzed. An outer accomplishment — the recital — had sparked unpredictable inner experience. I decided I would dance forever, and at the moment I decided I would break out of a shell that I didn’t even know I was in.”
Coming out of that shall left Montanaro with a passion for dancing and a confidence in learning.
“Not only did I practice ballet whenever I could, my performance in school improved dramatically,” Montanaro said, in a presentation she hopes to turn into a Technology Entertainment and Design Talk.
“It wasn’t because I fell in love with school. Some people would say that the skills I needed in ballet were the same as I needed in school, and I’m sure that’s true. But the connection went much deeper. Ballet was a catalyst, integrating my private experience of myself with my public presentation. Both started to work with each other, until I was flying.”
Montanaro argues that part of the problem with standardized testing (and the $2 billion industry it has spawned) is that success is still hard to define, especially when the measurements are tests that neither impact a student’s grades nor help them in their personal aspirations.
“Nothing can get better until we clearly define what we’re looking for,” Montanaro argued. “We need to look closely at what each child needs to fly. I say fly, because flight depends on the balance of oppositional forces. Our public and private self work together and independently. This carries over into learning, it’s an inner process and outer process. You learn new things, whether it’s math or music.”
