Once More, With Understanding

By Jay Mathews

Washington Post Staff Writer

Tuesday , September 5, 2000 ; A12

Kenneth Bernstein, who teaches ninth-grade social studies at Eleanor Roosevelt High School in Prince George's County, usually hears the complaint no more

than a few days into the school year. He'll start reviewing a lesson from the previous year to see how much the class knows. Then a student will emit a

high-pitched, nasal sound: "Do we have to go over that again?"

Indeed they do. And it isn't just during the first days of school that teachers will be striving to determine how many essential concepts still live in each young brain. State-ordered standardized tests taken by students each spring have caused instructors to spend more and more class time reviewing old lessons.

Some educators don't like the content of the state exams, and some don't like the penalties for failing the tests. But quite apart from those criticisms, the testing has spawned a debate over the proper role of review in the learning process.

Several teachers are just as unhappy as their students about the emphasis on review. They say the tests promote regurgitation, not education, and take up time that could be better spent on field trips or classroom debates that make learning more exciting.

Karen Tokos, a biology teacher at Madison High School in Fairfax County, said faculty members struggle with "a ridiculous number of disruptions to

instructional time" because of standardized testing. Timothy M. Rood, who teaches history at East Hampton High School on New York's Long Island, said that between the amount of material he must cover and the time he must spend on review sessions, he has had to resort to inviting students to come in on Saturdays.

But other teachers, as well as cognitive psychologists, say that review is more useful than it is given credit for--that ideas need to be repeated in order to sink in. If anything, the amount of review now being conducted in schools remains insufficient, some experts say.

"Review--and, certainly, spaced review--is not a common practice in the classroom," said Frank N. Dempster, an educational psychologist at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas.

Experts suspect that some teachers don't review as much as they should because they think students are bored by it. Bernstein said he felt that way as a student: "I would tune out, even in subjects like history and geography in which I was quite skilled."

So, as a teacher, he attacks the problem in several ways. He sends faster students on explorations of new topics while he helps slower ones catch up. He makes the sessions fun, appearing in costumes (judicial robes when discussing justice), making deliberate mistakes (extra points for anyone who catches him) and conducting "Jeopardy!"-like quiz games.

Studies show that review is best when it occurs soon after the initial lesson. Chemical pathways are opened when the brain absorbs a new concept, and, like any trail, they need to be reused to remain open. Studies also have found that short and frequent breaks for review are more effective than one long pre-test cramming session.

An Iowa study found that sixth-graders forced to review one to seven days after reading a fact-filled article did 15 to 30 percent better on a later test than those who waited two to three weeks to review. But other studies have shown that teachers often wait at least that long to revisit and test on old material.

Dempster said that not only do teachers not review enough, but also many textbooks do little to help them. One of the exceptions has been the math books produced by Saxon Publishers Inc., of Norman, Okla., which has made its emphasis on review a major selling point. At the end of each Saxon chapter, students are asked questions that relate not only to the material just learned but also to concepts covered in chapters all the way back to the beginning of the book.

The approach has been rejected by some educators as drill-ridden and old-fashioned. One University of Maryland professor said students need "a more flexible ability to apply their mathematics to novel problems" than Saxon provides. But the books appear to have helped raise achievement scores in many schools, particularly those with many disadvantaged students.

Lynn Dehart, principal of North Dallas High School in Dallas, which uses the textbooks, said Saxon helps students absorb concepts "so they can function

without thinking, and then move on to something new." A well-practiced student, for instance, can see at a glance whether a quadratic equation can be broken down into useful parts without testing all the possible solutions.

Tom Taylor, a teacher at North Dallas High, is also an advocate of the Saxon books. "When you have 30 kids in a classroom, some of them are learning really fast, but then you have kids who are not getting it, and they need more review," Taylor said.

In states that do not require tests to sum up a year's work, some teachers complain that students are not motivated to go back and reacquaint themselves with old material. "The mentality can be so strong that it can become impossible to even use a few questions in each homework [assignment] to review material from a previous unit because students remember too little to do the homework," said Julie Greenberg, a math teacher at Einstein High School in Montgomery County. Maryland does not have state exams at the end of high school courses, although it is developing such tests.

As for the teachers who don't like reviewing for state exams, many object to the burden some tests place on students to recall facts and concepts learned years

before. Officials in states such as Virginia say this is unavoidable because they can afford to test elementary and middle school students only once every two or three years.

"How can one review years' worth of instruction in a short time and do it efficiently and effectively?" said Glenna Ohlms, who teachers third grade at Yorkshire Elementary School in Prince William County. "We tend to feel that we must essentially cover all of this grade's curriculum by the end of March if we are to allow time to do a good review for tests in May."

Melissa Hunniford, who teaches sixth-grade social studies at Willow Springs Elementary School in Fairfax County, would like to see the state break the

eighth-grade Standards of Learning test in social studies into separate tests for sixth, seventh and eighth grades. "I think that year-by-year option is much better," she said.

The best review, teachers say, is one so subtle that students don't know they are doing it. Frazier O'Leary, an English teacher at Cardozo High School in the

District, waits until after his students have supposedly read Toni Morrison's 15-chapter novel "Song of Solomon" and then asks them to write their own 16th

chapter.

"It is very difficult for the students to do that if they haven't read the book because they must constantly refer to the plot and characters," he said. "So this is the sneaky kind of review."

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