It's Testing Damn Season Again
So the phone rings yesterday (now that the Board of Directors are full-fledged kindergartners, we're on the district robo-phone list), and it's the announcement that third-through-sixth grade education is about to be suspended for more important things--testing.
It will take the next three weeks. Please have your child to school on time. Please feed them. Please don't schedule doctor or dentist appointments during the school day during these three weeks.
Three weeks. Three. Weeks.
Kindergarten will be spared. In some area schools, first and second graders will take other tests, not because those tests yield any useful data, but because they will help prepare the students for when the tests Really Count.
The testing won't take up the entire day, but the chance of educating students during the other hours becomes exponentially smaller with the disruption of routine for students who are worn out from sitting and testing for hours. At my old high school, testing is limited to only some grades, but because there are so many shared teachers, school stopped for everyone.
Administrators face an unmanageable choice-- compress the testing to "save" the most days, and the test results will suffer, because students can only do so much of that standardized testing baloney in a day before they just shut down. But the more the testing is spread out, the more days are disrupted.
And when they come out the other side, it will be well into May and students will smell summer. Testing season doesn't just mark an interruption of the school year, a weeks-long pause, but in many schools, the end of the year. Not a pause, but a truncation, an amputation of the last stretch of school year.
For what?
In Pennsylvania, the results of the Big Standardized Tests will be used to rate schools and teachers. The state will also pretend that the tests generate actionable data.
They do not.
A fancy shmancy website will provide graphs and charts that tell teachers which and how many students scored in certain brackets--basically, the state gives each student the equivalent of an A, B, C, or F on each test. But (as in most states) the teachers cannot see how the students answered particular questions, not even what the questions were. This is not useful data (and it's not even delivered in a timely manner). And the tiny bit of information revealed is not anything that teachers did not already know. A five minute conversation with a student's previous teacher told me more than BS Test results ever could.
Do you want extra education time to make up for Learning Loss, or to simply expand educational offerings and opportunities for students? Get rid of the state test.
Do you want to claw back some financial savings and reclaim taxpayer dollars for more educational supports? Get rid of the state test.
Do you want to refocus schools on meeting students needs for education and support instead of focusing on getting the students to provide the test scores the school needs? Do you want to focus on the whole child instead of the test-taking child? Get rid of the state test.
This is such a waste. A waste of time, resources, attention, money and teachers' professional expertise. A bad idea poorly executed. End it.
Testing just effectively ended the school year in my district in Maine as well. So, here's what everybody should do: Call your US representatives and demand they co-sponsor Jamaal Bowman's "More Teaching, Less Testing" bill. It will allow states to stop yearly testing and go back to grade-span testing, e.g., once 3-6, etc. That's what the original NCLB legislation allowed. No one is saying we don't need accountability, but this "all testing all the time" is a terrible waste of taxpayer dollars. The only people gaining from all the testing in the testing companies. Maybe that will send a message to the states that too much testing is decimating the curriculum with no time for social studies and science--not to mention art and a sandbox in kindergarten. Maine is now doing MORE testing (all children K-8 2-3 times a year!) and all on computers, of course, so those kindergarteners will know how to type when the real testing happens in 3rd grade. I can tell you from experience that children are often just hitting keys to get the test over with--so all that data is meaningless. Perhaps Rep. Bowman's legislation will bring back some sanity. Kathleen Mikulka, Reading Interventionist who isn't working with her Tier III students because they are either testing or interventionists are monitoring testing. Sigh.
Absolutely. Tennessee spends millions each year on the test - it takes place in April, and it effectively ends the school year. Now, we'll be determining whether third graders are forced to repeat that grade solely based on the results of the reading portion of the Big State Test. Want to help third graders with reading? Give them three more weeks of instruction!! Give their teachers a reprieve from mandates around test-score targets. As you note, after the test, the school year is basically done. So, instead of robbing students of three weeks of learning, you're robbing them of 6-8 weeks.