Awareness Poster - Standardized Testing & Educational Reform

Here are my original sketches. I thought about posing my 2 year old son in my classroom, holding a number 2 pencil and filling in a bubble sheet, with a window showing a deserted playground in the background. The phrase "Value Added" refers to the algorithm that compares a student's scores from one year to the next and which have proved to be faulty.

In another concept, I wanted to address the loss of art music, and gym in our public schools. In this design an adult authority figure hands a pencil and test form to a small child who is standing in front of a trashcan overflowing with instruments, sports equipment, and art supplies. The caption would have read something like, "Put away your toys; it's time to learn." 

I am also interested in access to clean drinking water. One of my designs shows a fancy faucet dripping into the jerry can of a woman who has to walk miles to get water for her family. This design felt inauthentic because it is not my reality, but simply my idea of what someone else's reality might be, so I abandoned it. 

As a NewYork City public school teacher with a decade of experience, I've seen a slew of educational reforms come and go. Regardless of perceived merits of each new brilliant idea, what is readily apparent is that each wave of reform results in more standardized tests for our students. My poster addresses the newest of trends, the Common Core, which is an attempt to create national standards that promote critical thinking skills and increased sophistication of thought. While this sounds wonderful, the only part of the adjustment that has come to fruition is the writing of the standards and a new series of tests to measure student performance and therefore teacher performance. Kids now take tests in all subjects at the beginning and end of the year. I believe our middle school students spent 13 of their school days testing. As the parent of a small child. I balk at the thought of the amount of anxiety such a schedule creates. In addition, raising standards does nothing for students if support is not put in place to help them reach those standards. We could say that all of our students will gain acceptance to Harvard, but simply setting the standard will do nothing if the bulk of our students still read and write below grade level. To that end, more time spent testing and more teacher time spent grading these assessments hurts the very instructional trajectory these reforms seek to perfect. Anyway, my poster shows an adult hand placing a rotten apple core in the upturned hand of a trusting child. The image is set against a green chalkboard background. I merged a photograph of my own handwriting on my chalkboard into the photo and then slid a layer of a multiple choice bubble sheet across it to show my concern about the testing component. The core is rotten to suggest the issues with the movement. I have two versions here; the first is with the apple core pasted in its original configuration, but I was concerned about the consistency of the lighting. The second shows it flipped horizontally in an effort to make the lighting work.

This is my revised version, incorporating Pamela's feedback. I used the stamp tool to hid the swoosh of chalk in the lower left hand corner and angled the bubble sheet. What do you think?

And... my final draft with the slightly smaller apple, moved top hand, and call to action. 

Boycott standardized tests!

Works Cited

"Apple-core after Nine Days." Apple-core after Nine Days. N.p., n.d. Web. 05 June 2014.
"Chalkboard and Apple." HRVoiceorg RSS. N.p., n.d. Web. 05 June 2014.
"Hot Tub Blog." Hot Tub Blog. N.p., n.d. Web. 05 June 2014.
Trudon, Taylor. "Eighth Grader Designs Standardized Test That Slams Standardized Tests." The Huffington Post. TheHuffingtonPost.com, 17 Apr. 2013. Web. 05 June 2014.