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It’s three weeks to Mississippi regular test season begins, and Candace Hamberlin feels the pressure.
Evidence of what’s at stake surrounds Jefferson County Middle School, where Hamberlin is in her first year teaching 8th grade English. Inside her classroom, a small piece of black polyester with clear bags labeled “Data Wall” shows each student’s reading level. The entrance to the school has posters showing the school’s results from previous tests. One shows the grade Mississippi would give their school if the test were real: 175 out of 700 points, F.
Jefferson County is one of the smallest in Mississippi; 6,800 people spread over 527 kilometers along the Mississippi River. It is also one of the poorest, with 32 percent of the population living in extreme poverty. Fayette, where only elementary, middle, and high schools are established, is the only city in the county, where there are about a dozen churches but not a single one. The area is 13 percent white, but many of those families send their children to private or public schools; 98 percent of the school district’s students are Black.
Inside Hamberlin’s classroom, it’s test-prep drill time. This time there are 20 8th graders registered, but only 10 are available; six have been fired by the instructor whose district they wrote to increase the test, and the remaining four are absent for unknown reasons. Students in each room take a Chromebook and in, at a speed ranging from dragging feet to strong resistance. They open the StudySync app, which shows each of them a list of questions based on their strengths. Their faces look like they are being guillotined.
Most academic sessions at Jefferson County Middle School now begin and end with visuals. In fact, Hamberlin doesn’t study at all on Wednesdays and Thursdays; Students spend these hours with StudySync and i-Ready, another interactive software, so everyone can focus on where they need the most help.
Their teachers cannot tell them that they are sick of the game. Students’ lives, and theirs, are monitored by the upcoming Mississippi Academic Assessment Program (MAAP), a standardized annual test that measures their progress in language arts and science and math. Exam preparation is a year-round job. His students must learn to interpret the meaning of unfamiliar words, form ideas, identify the main idea of a passage, analyze tone and emotion. Every Friday brings practice tests.
Before moving to eighth grade, Hamberlin spent 25 years as an elementary school teacher. Eighth grade was very exciting for him because it was all about him analysis scriptures, not just destroying them. That’s his idea of a good time. He remembers reading the first chapter of the first Harry Potter book four times to make sure he didn’t miss anything. As he talks a group of students through a reading passage of Sojourner Truth, his interest is palpable—in the content, but more in the problem solving that reading requires understanding.
“Most of them think they are reading the story,” he says later. “You’re not reading the story, it’s just sprinkles on top. What was he thinking, why did he say it, how did he convey his message?”
