The case for teaching students about text genres has been made by critical educators for several years. Wendy Morgan, in Critical Literacy in the Classroom: The Art of the Possible, summarized the political rationale for explicit teaching about text genres by pointing out that genres are conventionalized means for accomplishing social purposes and

that students, particularly those not from the dominant culture, need to be given instruction in the ‘powerful genres’ of public life; to have these at command may enable those formerly excluded from social and political power to lay claim to it. So knowledge of language functions can bring wider ‘empowerment’.

Since No Child Left Behind legislation is becoming such a driving force in our classroom instructional practice, it’s time that teachers consider the possibility that standardized tests should also be considered a genre worth including in their teaching units.

I’m conflicted about using class time to teach about tests because I don’t endorse the practice of using standardized tests as an accountability measure. So I resist the suggestion that I should spend any class time explicitly preparing students to take tests. On the other hand, tests are gatekeeping instruments that are currently part of the social and political landscape for students. If teachers concentrate their efforts to prepare students for tests by teaching the content alone, they risk disadvantaging students for whom the test itself is an obstacle. Some might say that if kids know the content, they’ll do well on the test, but that point of view assumes that students understand the methods and purposes of the test makers - and they don’t. I do feel comfortable taking a more global approach to the whole problem, and including standardized tests as a part of my instructional repertoire for teaching about genres.

It’s clear to me that all texts, including electronic texts, need to be understood in terms of bias, point of view, author’s purpose, and text conventions so that we have sufficient understanding to evaluate information and the intended effect of any particular message we might encounter. Tests are most definitely written with a purpose in mind. Point of view is expertly hidden, though. And test makers naively believe that they can eliminate bias from their tests, which results in a sanitized, faceless document that is extremely difficult to understand when approached naively. Studying tests as a genre, makes it possible for students to “talk back” to the test itself, and to recognize how they are manipulated as readers. Students need some way to equalize the power dynamic so that they begin to recognize the intelligence that constructed the test document. That level of insight is necessary for them to make inferences about how the test makers expect them to respond.

A book by Lucy Calkins, Kate Montgomery, and Donna Santman called A Teacher’s guide to Standardized Reading Tests offers practical help for teachers interested in teaching their students how to analyze test questions. In my experience administering these tests, I often see students who I believe know the information the test is measuring but fail to correctly answer the question because they didn’t understand what was being asked. If we could help students become a little bit smarter about the tests themselves, the kids might have a better chance at scoring well on them.