A teacher in Denver heard the Denver superintendent Tom Boasberg claim that there was too much testing, and she delivered this statement to a recent meeting of the district school board:
Statement at 4/23/15 Public Comment section of the DPS Board meeting:
I am an 8th grade science teacher.
In February our Superintendent, Mr. Boasberg, sent an email with the subject, “Why we need fewer shorter tests.” I was absolutely dumbfounded. Later I saw video of Mr. Boasberg repeating these statements to I believe none other than the United States Senate. At that point my disbelief turned to resolve.
I have worked for DPS for more than 5 years. Students have never taken more tests and never taken longer tests than they are taking right now. These additional tests are not mandated by the state of Colorado or by the Federal Government, they are added entirely at the discretion of DPS leadership.
Federal Law does not require 2nd graders to take 80 minute reading and writing tests 4 times a year. District leaders choose this for them.
An elementary colleague asked me this morning, “please also mention the students bursting into tears.” This is over the struggle of testing for well over an hour on content they haven’t even been taught yet. Under mandated testing this (testing students over content they’ve not been taught) happens at every grade level and in every content area.
I also recently came upon a Denver Post article from last October in which Mr. Boasberg claims the average 4th grader spends what amounts to one day a year taking standardized tests.
No.
In our classrooms we lose weeks adding to months of time to testing. New tests this year require 2 hour blocks of time. 2 hour test blocks mean modified schedules that interfere with full weeks of instruction. In a given week some classes may see their teacher on only one day, others may have a 4 hour block in the library with their teacher to accommodate test demands.
In preparation for PARCC testing one of my classes lost 2 days of science instruction pretending to take a test. This “infrastructure trial” was to see if our internet would work for the real event. The irony is that we were not testing Pearson’s actual server which failed twice last week.
We used to lose two weeks in March to testing. Now March, April, and May are entirely defined by tests. I know special education teachers who have not worked with their students in an instructional capacity in more than 4 weeks and will not again for the foreseeable future. Those teachers spend nearly all of their time providing accommodations for testing students.
I myself just conducted 6 days in a row of Science CMAS testing, finishing a make-up session due to server failure this afternoon. In 3 days students will complete the second round of PARCC. The week after that is devoted to district end of year tests.
So if I may address parents in the audience. Parents have the power. My hope is that there will be another wave of opt outs. Put an end to this right now.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
It seems anyone who talks about the need to “reduce” testing means “get rid of all those other tests. The tests I favor are the only ones we need.”
LikeLike
Which, by the way, is why I’m very leery of agreeing with people who want to reduce testing. We need to eliminate it, not reduce it.
LikeLike
Dienne, you’re right of course. What they really mean is, reduce the publicly acknowledged accountability tests to grade span testing, because they have already locked in the delivery of continuous monitoring of every student toward “proficiency” during the spanned years.
Assessment-driven personalized instruction will dominate now, for as long as “accountability” persists. Poor districts are taken over and compelled to buy data-driven “tools” for improvement. For-profit assessment is continuous and inextricable from the for-profit district curriculum delivery service. I’m working with community groups in several low and mixed income cities who are dazed and blindsided by what is being done to their children.
And to the VIPs at the Network for Public Education who go along with the grade span charade, or “work with” Gates and Broad money, I only have one question: who is paying for your book tour?
LikeLike
Reblogged this on onewomansjournal and commented:
Yes, a HUGE HOAX.
LikeLike
I am leery of agreeing with people who want to reduce testing. I TOTALLY AGREE .. ELMINATE TESTING. Our students are NOT FOR PROFIT nor for DATA mining. I really don’t want an Orwellian life nor do I want to live the Hunger Games.
LikeLiked by 1 person
The rheephormsters at all levels have an amazing capacity for getting the simplest things wrong.
Take, for example, the ability to read. Jersey Jazzman, 4-7-2014, “Why Is Michelle Rhee Wrong About Everything?” in which he begins with the following from the very person who gave rheephorm its, er, name:
[start]
Those test-crazed districts need to be reeled in. But a new study by Teach Plus, an organization that advocates for students in urban schools, found that on average, in grades three and seven, just 1.7 percent of classroom time is devoted to preparing for and taking standardized tests. That’s not outrageous at all. Most people spend a larger percentage of their waking day choosing an outfit to wear or watching TV.
[end]
So Jersey Jazzman does what any “shrill” and “strident” critic of self-proclaimed “education reform” would do: he actually reads the report referenced and discovers:
[start]
Let’s be very clear: in direct contradiction to Rhee, the Teach Plus report specifically says the 1.7 percent figure does not include test preparation time.
[end]
Link: http://jerseyjazzman.blogspot.com/2014/04/why-is-michelle-rhee-wrong-about.html
Ok, ok, ok already. I’ll give you some excerpts Jersey Jazzman provides from the actual report about the actual time devoted to actual testing based on his actual reading:
[start]
•“Yes, with daily test prep and standards review sessions. More than 35 percent of instructional time is spent on these assessments per year. That includes initial instruction, review, scoring, planning, preparation of additional assessment materials, and reassessments.” – Third grade teacher
“The prepping for the test takes a lot of time. Instead of possibly doing projects or more hands-on learning, we really focused on the testing format and preparing our students to be comfortable taking the test. The prepping starts at the beginning of the year and ends in April. We also have to do the practice tests for the [state test] and [district test]. These practice tests can take up to an hour to do.” – Third grade teacher
• “We spend time practicing getting into our testing groups, taking practice tests, etc. We also typically take time from our usual instruction to focus on test prep in the week or two leading to the test. For example, I stop teaching the novel we are reading for a week to do multiple choice test prep. Also, during the week of the test, we have literally no instruction. I would say overall we lose about 15-20 days of instruction to testing to statewide testing. Another 20 days we are instructing, but it is focused on test prep.” – Seventh grade teacher
[end]
Ah, but remember that the leaders and enforcers and enablers of the self-proclaimed “education reform” movement are big fans of Lewis Carroll, because just as the preceding illustrates, they have learned a lot from such classics as THROUGH THE LOOKING GLASS:
[start]
“When I use a word,’ Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, ‘it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less.’
’The question is,’ said Alice, ‘whether you can make words mean so many different things.’
’The question is,’ said Humpty Dumpty, ‘which is to be master — that’s all.”
[end]
Testing. Less. Rheetorically makes perfect ₵ent¢.
When you are influenced by a Rheeality Distortion Field.
But here on Planet Reality, not really, not even in the most Johnsonally sort of ways…
😎
LikeLike
This is very true in LAUSD also. In addition to state mandated tests, the district mandates 3 writing tests a year, 3 math tests lifted entirely from the New York State engage series, not our math series so not aligned with our sequence. And I just finished the third mandated DIBELS test, given one on one to my 23 students, at about ten minutes a kid. We start with state mandated CELDT tests for our English learners (yes, give it in August when they have just spent two months out of school, many not hearing English at home) and finish with the mandated SBAC tests that Pearson designs for our third grade and up students. Plus fifth grade will have mandated science testing, and mandated PE testing. Learning is such fun under these circumstances, right?
LikeLike
This Denver teacher is precisely on point as the poor kids of Denver will have experienced a total of more than TWO WHOLE YEARS OF TESTING in place of learning by the time they get to the end of 12th grade (provided they don’t drop out to preserve their sanity). Anyone talking of “reducing testing” is full of reform-y crap. The only thing that would bring actual teaching and learning back to public schools is a total elimination of all outside non-teacher made tests. I am pretty sure these idiots could not even be trusted with an ITBS test every third year since they have proven beyond a shadow of a doubt that their intensions with information from tests is NOT HONORABLE and is absolutely against what researchers, statisticians and sane folks say a manufactured test is capable of determining.
LikeLiked by 1 person
“Anyone talking of “reducing testing” is full of reform-y crap.” Succinctly put!
LikeLike
I work with intervention teachers in Denver. These are teachers that help the most vulnerable readers catch up to their peers (who by the way are not waiting for the vulnerable kids to catch up to them). To close “the gap” these intervention teachers have to move kids FURTHER and FASTER.
Like the Special Education teachers mentioned by this Denver 8th grade teacher the intervention teachers I work with are meeting with their vulnerable students on average 50 – 60% of the time the kids are in school. What are the intervention teachers doing the rest of the time? Some subbing in classrooms but mostly testing related stuff!
Good plan for “closing the gap.”
LikeLike
I wonder if anyone counts the additional testing that teachers must provide to create grades for students and for their PLC meetings, which means comparing scores on the weekly LA and math skills tests. By the time I’ve given the weekly phonics test, spelling test, vocabulary test, comprehension test, fluency reading test, and math skills test, I’ve used up all but one hour of my Friday class time (four hours by 36 weeks or 146 hours or 23 days of teaching). This does not include pre and post tests for reading and math units or the time used for Dibels and Dibels progress monitoring. We already spend fewer days in school than any of our competitors. This really cuts into student learning time.
LikeLike
Firstgrademonkey: I see you are up on your very old dead Greek guys—
“The mind is not a vessel to be filled but a fire to be kindled.” [Plutarch]
You lit a fire under, er, in me as I suddenly realized that when it comes to high-stakes standardized testing…
That the opt-movement is merely a restatement of two of the mantras of the self-proclaimed “education reform” movement, especially in its charter variant:
“Choice” and “freedom from burdensome and damaging government regulations.”
I mean, parents aren’t supposed to give up their parental prerogatives to rescue their children from big gubmint-mandated child abuse, right? And if the edupreneurs and edufrauds and edubullies don’t want to be accused of double think and double talk and double standards then they find themselves hoisted by their own rheetorical petards.
Homegrown talent anticipated this a while ago:
“Man is the only kind of varmint sets his own trap, baits it, then steps in it.”
But rest assured that the above by John Steinbeck will NOT be on CCSS-aligned tests.
Go figure…
😎
LikeLike
Regarding those who wrote that standardized testing should be eliminated. I agree 100%. I hate standardized testing.
However, we have to realize that is an impossible goal. Public schools are governed by politics and politicians, and always will be. Politicians will want to see some kind of standardized measurement regarding how kids are doing.
So although we may want to totally eliminate standardized testing, we have to realize that will never happen. So a more realistic goal would be to GREATLY reduce standardized testing (a real reduction, not a fake one as in this article), and to improve the quality of those tests as a diagnostic tool. But a serious MAJOR reduction, not just meaningless talk about it.
LikeLike
Spoken like a true neoliberal. There Is No Alternative. Resistance is futile.
It’s an impossible goal so long as you believe it’s impossible. Someday we have to remember we are a democracy and that our politicians answer to us.
LikeLike
Dienne,
Add this to your list of focus-group tested lines: “The train has left the station.”
“The greatest risk is to do nothing at all.”
“We are building the plane in mid-air as we fly it.”
Anyone want a free ticket to be on that plane?
LikeLike
Thanks for posting. Just to clarify: this is the transcript of a male teacher, not a female one, as implied above.
LikeLike