The blogger known as “Dad Gone Wild” lives in Chattanooga, and he is astonished by the Tennessee Department of Education’s inability to schedule and complete the state testing. First, it was all going to be online, but the platform crashed. Then, it was back to paper-and-pencil, but unknown numbers of schools never received the tests. Kids were scheduled to celebrate Dr. Seuss’s birthday by reading, but that was canceled for testing. Now, school trips scheduled long ago will be canceled, because the testing window has moved again.
Remember when they said that “reform” was all about the kids? This dad thinks that none of this is for the kids or about the kids.
All the lectures I’ve received over the last couple of years about how the kids come first and now that we are in the midst of a fiasco that is basically robbing our kids of the last two months of their school year, nobody can address them. Here’s a newsflash: you only get one 4th grade March. You only get one 7th grade April. What the Tennessee Department of Education is essentially saying is that these tests supersede their needs and their right to an actual education, and that it’s not even necessary to ask kids if they are okay with giving up that time. As a parent, that angers me. As a kid, it would incense me.
And what about the teachers? The instructional time lost due to test preparation aside, teachers have been scrambling to create new lesson plans for all of these shifts in testing schedules. I guarantee teachers would prefer to not have to deal with this incompetence from the DOE and instead have the authority to plan lessons that would be truly beneficial to their students. It’s maddening and very time-consuming to constantly be changing the schedule. But hey, Governor Haslam and TNDOE are saying these tests won’t count, or well maybe they’ll count, but hey…let’s just take them and we’ll figure out what they count for after we have the results. Have you ever heard of such a thing? It’s insanity.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
TEACHERS COME LAST!
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Just a quibble, but it should be “a state where kids come last” – not, “the” state. There are many states with that, er, honor.
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The ed reform “movement” itself says that ed reform is about “choice and accountability”
Charters, vouchers and tests. That means the only part of the ed reform “movement” that is relevant to kids in existing public schools is “testing”.
I don’t know why anyone is surprised that’s the exclusive focus. If ed reform were about anything other than promoting charters and vouchers and administering tests to kids in existing public schools I think we would have heard or seen some sign of it in our public schools by now, 15 years into it.
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Cancelling reading on Dr. Seuss’s birthday and replacing it with testing. That says it all.
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WOW. I thought Indiana had that “honor”.
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The incredible thing to me is the off-hand nature with which this incident is treated. The state will give teachers a choice as to whether to use student data in their personal evaluation, but schools will be evaluated on these tests despite the fact that they could not be given as scheduled. Never mind the fact that having a test before the end of a course is silly, not to mention disruptive. This has always been a problem. Because the testing had to come before the end of the year so the state could grade them and the grade could be a part of the student grade, school became way too disrupted during and after testing. New procedures this year have part one in late February, then another round toward the end of school. Put this with the general chaos of spring and you shorten the school year by nearly ten weeks with these and other interruptions.
We agonize about standards, bell ringers, this technique or that philosophy, then we disrupt the school day. Classic straining at gnats and swallowing camels.
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This sounds like another DOE run by people who have no business being in charge. I thought it was bad when I taught at a school that was waffling its way through the year.
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Well, here’s my experience in a nutshell (this is Shelby County, TN): I wrote to my daughter’s assistant principal (10th grade principal) to find out whether my daughter’s possible refusal of the test would affect her grade and in case it doesn’t, can she stay home or has to be in school on testing days.
He wrote back that her grade wouldn’t suffer, but any time within 3 weeks of the official testing days she goes to school, she has to take the test. Staying home would give her unexcused absence.
When I pressed him about what happens if she goes to school on the day of the test but refuses to take the test, he referred me to the Shelby County Schools Chief of Staff.
The Chief of Staff didn’t answer my emails in the first week, but then I called his office, and within minutes my email was answered. He wrote to me that my daughter’s refusal of TNReady would hurt her grades by as much as 25% (in direct contradiction to what the asst principal wrote to me), and he referred me to a TN law that was outdated since it was written in 2010 and it talked about TCAP, the predecessor of TNReady. Plus it referred to 3-8th graders and not high schoolers.
When I pointed this out to the Chief of Staff, he said, he’ll consult his staff and will get back to me. He never did.
So I wrote to the board of Shelby County Schools. They never answered.
My daughter tells me that she was supposed to take the test today, but it didn’t arrive to her school. Maybe tomorrow. At least this is her understanding.
As you see from the above, I found out exactly nothing. Not a thing. According to my records, I wrote my first email regarding TNReady on Feb 22, almost 3 weeks ago.
What’s the (printable) English word for the above?
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Take your pick
CORRUPTION
INCOMEPTENCE
CRONYISM
IGNORANCE
MENDACITY
BULLPOOP
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What happens if she “takes the test” and randomly answers questions?
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My child is incapable of doing that, even if the test had no effect on her final grade. 🙂 But the problem is that the grade on the test could count as much as 25% of her final grade.
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My daughter would have found it near impossible to “blow” a test on purpose as well. Class finals could count as much as 20% of our grade. Fortunately, my state has not yet decided that they can decide grades on a mass basis. From reading your comments over time, I have a feeling that her daddy is more than capable of giving her the support she needs.
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Or if she breaks the seal on the test, opens the booklet, pushes it away and says, “I’ve finished”?
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Latest stuff on TNReady: ” Meaning, the students answered all those questions on the wrong lines. Teachers didn’t know. They aren’t allowed to look at the test.”
http://www.mommabears.org/blog/ready-to-revolt-trashtnready
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Hard to read the article without reaching for medication:
“Calculators: They were supposed to be embedded in the online TNReady test, but now that the test had to be switched to paper tests, districts are scrambling to purchase thousands of dollars worth of TNReady approved calculators. Not just any calculator will do. So, districts are spending yet more scarce money on technology specifically for this dumb test. Dickson County School District spent over $12,000 on calculators. That’s $12,000 they didn’t have budgeted, that will have to come from somewhere.”
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