The Number 23

Something happened the other day that I still don’t know how to process. There are about three scenarios for this happening–one is great, the others are not.
So, I gave a Lord of the Flies quiz to my HONORS sophomores. Run-of-the-mill reading-plus quiz, where they had to think a little, but the thinking was way easy if they read the book. As usual, my good students did well, some others did pretty well, while others failed miserably. On a 25-question quiz of matching, true/false, characters who said quotes, and multiple guess, the average in one class was 16 (64 percent), while the average in the other was 17.3 (69 percent). When you consider that there were some kids who received 22s, 23s, and a 24, it makes the average look a little worse.
I was bummed. This a book that isn’t that tough and some kids actually like. They were supposed to be finished with it last Wednesday–knowing that there would be a ton of work coming on it–yet I gave this quiz on Monday, two days ago. They had an entire extra weekend.
Here’s the awful part, where I have no idea what to think. My 12-yr-old son Anton read this book over the summer. Lord of the Flies was an optional book for his summer reading between sixth and seventh grade. On his flights to and from LAX and RDU (Raleigh/Durham), he started and finished the book. Maybe a few pages were read in the terminal. When he got back home, I asked him some questions about it, we talked about what I teach in the book, and that was that. We might have talked for 10-15 minutes in July about the book, but have never spoken about it again.
On Monday, he heard me groaning about all the wrong answers I marked on their quizzes. As an absolute goof, I gave him the quiz. Now, mind you, we talk about Lord of the Flies all the time in class, do close readings, watch the movie, have character worksheets, and talk about Golding and his themes that he states in the final pages. It’s the book we are reading and it doesn’t go away. My students had the quiz in front of them, and have taken many of my quizzes before.
My son has never taken a quiz of mine. And, for this Lord of the Flies quiz, I was sitting in my chair with the quiz while he was ten feet away on the couch. He did NOT have the quiz in front of him. I read him the questions and he answered them quickly. The matching were answered without the names in front of him, and not having read the book since July. I read the others, including the multiple guess, which featured some long answers.
I had 65 kids take this quiz. My student who has the highest grade in both classes, he who has never received a B EVER, got the 24 of 25. Anton got a 23, the same as three other students. Everyone else was lower and, once again, remember those averages. That’s right, though–my 12-yr-old son, without the quiz in front of him, without thinking about the book for five months, did better than 60 honors students at North High.
And, now the questions. Is my son a super genius and school is too easy for him because his parents are so amazing that he knows everything? Uhhh, he’s playing Overwatch right now and writes summaries for stories at his school (summaries that look like a 7th-grader wrote them). He has always scored well in English on standardized tests, but not in the realm of amazing.
Or, did students just not read? I had a ton of them who claimed they did, but they couldn’t even break a 20 on the quiz.
Or, are kids just better test takers than others? Are they just smarter than others? I am starting to think that I could predict a student’s entire grade just by a single quiz, because the ones that got the 22s, 23s, and the 24 are the ones that ALWAYS do. There’s forever that hope that the fringe kid will rise to the occasion and take down these grade behemoths; sorry, they don’t.
Finally, has open access (any kid can take any class) just diluted the pool so much that we teach to the middle and we accept good for what used to be great? Because now that I’ve given this quiz, what would the point of a test be? I already know the results. And the ensuing essay on literature they didn’t read (or didn’t understand) would just be more of me beating that metaphorical dead horse. What do you do when your class averages are less than 70 percent? because pretending that students just had a bad day, or are bad quiz takers, doesn’t explain why my 12-yr-old got a 23 on the same quiz without having the actual quiz in front of him.
Maybe all of this might make people uncomfortable.
Teaching is humbling and frustrating. I learn things every day. But, again, I’m starting to see why other teachers aren’t testing. When you do, you generate results. These results–this data, if you will–doesn’t always add up.