Archives for category: Testing
« Older Entries
Newer Entries »

What the BATs Think About ESSA

By dianeravitch
December 9, 2015 //
3

I was not sure if anyone had actually sat down and read every word of the 1,061 pages of the Every Child Succeeds Act of 2015. It was passed today and is on its way to the President’s desk for his signature.

 

The Badass Teachers Association created a committee of five classroom teachers who did read every word of what will soon be the new law governing public (and charter) education in the United States.

 

Their analysis highlights both the good and the bad in the bill. None of their concerns were addressed. The bill dismantles NCLB but allows more charters, more room for TFA, “Pay for Success” for investors, and a bunch of other things that teachers worry about. And of course the teachers object to annual testing, which wastes instructional time and narrows curriculum.

 

It is a fine statement and I recommend that  you read it, because it was written by classroom teachers who know how the law is going to affect them and their students.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Education Reform, Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), Privatization, Testing

John Merrow Asks: Why is Washington Celebrating Kaya Henderson’s Five-Year Anniversary?

By dianeravitch
December 9, 2015 //
12

John Merrow says that the celebration of Kaya Henderson’s five years as chancellor of the D.C. public schools is premature.

 

In a scathing article, he reviews what has happened in the District of Columbia under the nine-year rule of Michelle Rhee and Kaya Henderson.

 

Last month Kaya Henderson celebrated her fifth anniversary as Chancellor of the public schools in Washington, DC. Five years at the helm of an urban district is a milestone that few big city superintendents achieve, and she has been praised for hanging in and for calming down the storm created by Michelle Rhee, whose 3+ year reign was marked by numerous controversies, included the massive scandal sometimes called “Erasergate,” when USA Today investigative reporters found that thousands of student answers were changed–and almost always from ‘wrong’ to ‘right.’

 

The Washington Post, a consistent cheerleader for Henderson and her controversial predecessor, celebrated Henderson’s anniversary with a largely laudatory article that included praise from two members of Washington’s education establishment, US Secretary of Education Arne Duncan and the long time Executive Director of the Great City Schools, Michael Casserly. The latter called Henderson “one of the most effective and popular school leaders any place in the country.” As the Post put it, “Unlike her predecessor, whose turbulent style and top-down approach made enemies of many teachers and politicians, Henderson is credited with taking a more collaborative approach.” That’s another way of saying that Henderson is a “kinder, gentler version of Rhee,” a familiar observation over the years.

 

But a closer look at what Henderson has achieved reveals that there’s little reason to celebrate.

 

Looking at the huge score gaps on NAEP and the dismal performance of D.C. students on the Common Core tests (which he calls a “catastrophic failure”), Merrow wonders why the applause for Henderson.

 

It seems to me that the District’s academic performance–the NAEP gaps, the PAARC scores, the exodus of veteran teachers and principals–are prima facie evidence of the bankruptcy of the Rhee/Henderson ‘test and punish’ approach. Henderson may in fact be a ‘kinder, gentler version’ of Michelle Rhee, but she’s still an acolyte and enthusiast for policies that damage learning opportunities for children….

 

Nationally, many in education people are waking up to the failures of ‘test and punish,’ and the new ESEA pulls back on testing. Of course we need ways of assessing teachers, but teachers themselves have to be part of the process. Every other country uses tests to assess students, not to play gotcha with teachers.

 

The approach to ‘education reform’ begun by Michelle Rhee in 2007 and continuing under Kaya Henderson to this day is a failure and a fraud. Washington’s students and teachers deserve better……

Categories Accountability, District of Columbia, Education Reform, Testing

Yong Zhao and Pasi Sahlberg: Why Andreas Schleicher Is Wrong About Testing in the US

By dianeravitch
December 8, 2015 //
16

Andreas Schleicher is the director of that section of the OECD in charge of international testing. He recently claimed that Americans are not over tested. He can’t understand why parents and teachers are complaining so much, when students in other nations take many more tests than American students.

 

Since this seemed counter-intuitive, I called on two great international experts–Pasi Sahlberg and Yong Zhao– who work with OECD data frequently. Both responded promptly.

 

Here are their comments on Schleicher’s claim that American students are not over tested:

 

Pasi Sahlberg, author of Finnish Lessons and currently a Visiting Professor at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, writes:

 

“Education myth: American students are over-tested,” says the title in the Hechinger Report on 7 December 2015. That story covers the frustration of OECD’s education chief Andreas Schleicher after he attended recent education summit held at the White House. Schleicher concluded that the United States is not a country of heavy testing and that standardized testing is not the bottleneck for improvement.

 

Wait a minute. So, standardized testing is not an issue in the U.S. education? My experience based on school visits and many discussions with parents and teachers around the U.S. suggest quite the opposite. It is clear to me that one of the main obstacles in focusing more on real learning, giving more room to music and arts in American schools, building learning in schools around curiosity, creativity and exploration of interesting issues, is standardized testing.

 

I have been in school districts where principals told me that they spend up to one third of annual instructional time to testing and related activities. I have seen tens of schools and hundreds of teachers who tell how there is no more recess or physical education or music in their schools because time is needed to do well in obligatory tests. And it is not just tests themselves but everything that comes with high-stakes nature of them: fear of failure, pressure of performance, and time spend in and out of school on preparing for these tests. And perhaps most importantly, I don’t know any other OECD country where cheating and corruption are so common in all levels of the school system than it is in the U.S., only because dominance of standardized tests.

 

Schleicher writes in his blog that “over the years I have learned to trust the reports of students on what actually happens in the classroom more than the claims of many experts.” But how can a teenager tell the difference between standardized test and other kind of classroom assessments that are rarely standardized? If 15-year-old students in Finland tell that they take standardized tests three to five times a year they clearly don’t know what standardized tests are. And how could they when they have never seen one.

 

I tend to trust more on quantitative research and data from experts than surveys that reflect often opinions more than actual facts. In a recent (October 2015) study by the Council of the Great City Schools (CGCS) researchers examined the amount of standardized testing in American urban schools. Their research found that “students in the 66 districts were required to take an average of 112.3 tests between pre-K and grade 12.” It is worth of note that this number does not include optional tests, diagnostic tests for students with disabilities or English learners, school-developed or required tests, or teacher designed or developed tests. According to this same study the average student in these districts will typically take about eight standardized tests per year, e.g., two NCLB tests (reading and math), and three formative exams in two subjects per year. This is heavy testing to me. It is about eight times more than in Finland.

 

Andreas Schleicher is right when he writes that “it is actually very hard to find comparative data on the prevalence of testing in OECD countries”. But he is wrong in hoping that students would be a more reliable source of answers than experts. When 20 per cent of students in the state of New York opted out mandated standardized state tests earlier this year, it was a clear sign that both students and parents think that their schools are over-tested.

 

In the end, what Schleicher’s simple international comparisons ignore is that toxic and often misused accountability systems that link data from standardized tests to teachers, schools, districts and, through PISA, to entire education systems. GSCS’s study confirmed that “there is no correlation between the amount of mandated testing time and the reading and math scores in grades four and eight on the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP)”. Therefore, rather than suggesting that there is still room for more standardized testing in the U.S. it would benefit more to advice authorities and politicians to invest that money to improve the existing tests. Standardized testing is a growing industry globally and those with most interests in having even more testing in schools are corporations that have direct economic interest to test our children over and over again.

 

Yong Zhao, author of Who’s Afraid of the Big, Bad Dragon? Why China Has the Best (and the Worst) Schools in the World, and professor at the University of Oregon, also responded with the following post: “Are American Students Overtested: Schleicher vs. Schleicher”:

 

It begins:

 

 

Just as the U.S. is about to move away from over testing its students, PISA’s Andreas Schleicher says American students are not really over-tested: “The U.S. is not a country of heavy testing,” said Schleicher in a column published in the Hechinger Report.

 

Schleicher drew the conclusion based on PISA 2009 student survey data, which was not released publicly. Schleicher claims to “trust the reports of students on what actually happens in the classroom more than the claims of many experts” in his blog post that argues that U.S. is not a country of heavy testing. One wonders why he has not released that data.

 

However the publically available PISA report contains standardized testing data reported by school principals. Given the lack of access to the student data, reports by school principals are the best source we have. I’d like to think that school principals know as well as students if standardized tests are given in schools. Moreover, comparing the few data points Schleicher reveals in his blog suggests that the perception of students is not far off from that of principals. Based on the principal reports about standardized testing, I found Schleicher’s statement misleading, to say the least.

 

Is U.S. a country of heavy testing?

 

First, what is considered heavy testing? Schleicher seems to think at least once a month is not heavy enough: “In many countries there is a test going on every month,” while in the U.S., “only 2% of students said they took standardized tests at least once a month.”

 

Is 3 to 5 times a year heavy? That is about one standardized test every 2 months of the school year. About 40% of American students take standardized tests 3 to 5 times a year. How about 1 to 2 a year? That’s almost every American student (97%).

 

Schleicher’s conclusion is based on international comparisons. He highlighted two nations that have more standardized tests than the United States but neglected to mention that there many countries that have fewer standardized tests. For example, according to the 2009 PISA principal survey, 76.4% of students in Slovenia, 73.2% in Belgium, 71.1% in Spain, 67.6% in Austria, and 60% in Germany “never” had standardized testing. Japan (34.6%), U. K. (32.5%), Australia (29.9%), and Ireland (35.0%) also have more students never given standardized tests. Only 2.5% of students in the U.S. never had a standardized test. Only three OECD nations—Korea (2.1%), Luxembourg (1.0%), and Finland (1.5%) – reported lower percentage of students who never take standardized tests.

 

While the U.S. does not have the largest percentage of students given standardized testing “at least once a month,” it is one of the countries with the largest proportion of students experiencing standardized testing “1 to 5 times a year.” With over 95% of students who attend schools whose principals reported giving standardized testing 1 to 5 times a year, the U.S. is only after four (Korea:96.5%, Finland:96.3%, Luxembourg: 96.4%, Hong Kong: 98.4%) out of the nearly 70 countries participated in PISA had a slightly larger percentage of students experiencing standardized testing 1 to 5 times a year. Even Shanghai, Singapore, and Chinese Taipai reported fewer students taking standardized tests with this frequency.

 

More importantly, does standardized testing help improve education quality?

 

To learn the answer to this crucial question, open the link and read Zhao’s conclusion.

 

 

 

Categories Education Reform, Testing

Daily Life in a No-Excuses Charter School: Is This Good Education?

By dianeravitch
December 7, 2015 //
52

Peter Greene posted a commentary by Emily Kaplan, a teacher who worked in a no-excuses charter school in Boston, considered one of the best in the city because of its high test scores. Disturbed by the pressure that teachers must exert to get those high scores, Emily left the charter school and now teaches in a public school. She describes the shame and other tactics used to motivate students to try harder to ace the tests.

 

Yes, the students get high scores on the state tests, which is very satisfying to the charter advocates and helps them in their appeal to get more charters and  more funding from private and public sources.

 

But here is the problem:

 

The problem is that standardized test scores mean very little. On the only tests that do mean a tremendous amount for these students— the SSATs— students at the school I taught at perform abysmally. Subsequently, these same middle schoolers who often dramatically outperform their wealthy white peers on these tests are not accepted in large numbers to the most selective high schools (and most of those who do struggle socially and emotionally when thrust into student bodies that aren’t upwards of 98% students of color); struggle to succeed academically in high school (81% earn high school grade-point averages below 3.0 in the first semester); and certainly do not thrive after high school, graduating from college at very low rates and, among those who don’t go to college, failing in large numbers to secure full-time employment.

 
Correlation is not causation, after all; the fact that those wealthy white students who do well on state standardized tests go on to enjoy tremendous opportunities, in education and in life, does not mean that these scores cause these outcomes. This fallacy, however, constitutes the fuel of the no-excuses runaway train, and leads to the dehumanization of children of color at schools like the one at which I taught. At this school, children are deprived of a comprehensive, developmentally appropriate, and humane education; instead, they are subjected to militaristic discipline, excessive amounts of testing (well beyond that which is already mandated by the state), a criminally deficient amount of playtime (in a nine-hour school day, kindergartners have twenty minutes of recess), and lack of access to social-emotional curricula— all so that the people who run their schools can make a political point.

Categories Charter Schools, Privatization, Testing

Mercedes Schneider on David Hursh’s New Book on Corporate Reform

By dianeravitch
December 7, 2015 //
2

Mercedes Schneider really liked reading David Hursh’s new book, The End of Public Schools: The Corporate Reform Agenda to Privatize Education.

He identifies the major players in the corporate reform movement: Bill Gates, Arne Duncan, Pearson, and many more. He sees the clear linkage between high-stakes testing and privatization.

We can’t let this happen.

Categories Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Privatization, Testing

Cheating Confirmed at Politically-Connected Pennsylvania Charter School

By dianeravitch
December 1, 2015 //
18

The for-profit Chester Community Charter School has been a continual source of controversy. The founder, a lawyer, was one of the biggest donors to Republican Governor Tom Corbett and served on his education transition team. He made millions by supplying the goods and services needed by the school. The charter school, which claimed excellent test scores, drew more than half the students in its district, leaving the public schools teetering on the verge of bankruptcy. By state formula, the charter school is paid more for each special education student than the district is paid, further impoverishing the district since the funding comes out of the district’s allotment of state money. In recent years, teachers have had to work without salary until state aid bailed out the district.

 

Now the school and its staff stand accused of having systematically cheated on tests.

 
The Notebook in Philadelphia reports:
 

A former testing coordinator at Chester Community Charter School, the state’s largest bricks-and-mortar charter with more than 3,000 students, has been sanctioned by the state for “systemic violations of the security of the PSSA exams” over the five-year period between 2007 and 2011.

The school was under scrutiny for testing irregularities by the Pennsylvania Department of Education as part of a statewide cheating scandal that broke in 2011.

CCCS is operated for profit by a company owned by Vahan Gureghian, a major Republican donor and power broker who was among the largest individual contributors to former Gov. Tom Corbett’s campaign and a member of his education transition team. During his term, Corbett visited CCCS to tout it as an exemplar of high-quality education for low-income communities.

Now with two campuses, CCCS has drawn more than half the K-8 students who live in the Chester Upland School District.

The state’s disciplinary action against the former coordinator, Patricia A. Sciamanna, was for violating testing rules during years that CCCS was struggling to meet federal student proficiency targets used for critical decisions, including whether a charter should be renewed.

The Pennsylvania Professional Standards and Practices Commission (PSPC) suspended Sciamanna’s instructional and administrative licenses, as well as her eligibility to work in a charter or cyber charter, for two years….

 

The school’s statement reiterated its longstanding position that PDE has made no determination against the school itself in regards to cheating.

“The PDE closed its review of CCCS in September 2012, with no finding of wrongdoing by the school,” the statement said.

That month, a letter from PDE sent to CCCS, however, cited “overwhelming evidence of testing irregularities” and required the school to adopt strict testing protocols.

CCCS is now one of nine districts or charters in the state on an “open watch list,” meaning that its test administration continues to be closely monitored and supervised by PDE.

Test scores at the school plunged under new security measures and have remained relatively low since.

 

Although much of the public attention around adult cheating on standardized tests in Pennsylvania has been focused on Philadelphia schools, the statewide investigation launched in 2011 probed suspicious results in 38 districts and 11 charters across Pennsylvania.

 

One was CCCS.

 

In July 2011, the Notebook and NewsWorks reported on a state-commissioned analysis showing widespread test score irregularities at dozens of Pennsylvania schools in 2009. In response, the Pennsylvania Department of Education commissioned a further analysis of PSSA results from 2010 to 2011, then launched an investigation into those whose results was most suspicious. CCCS was flagged multiple times for an unusually high number of wrong-to-right erasures on the test booklets.

The investigation went on for more than a year. The September 2012 letter, sent by then-Deputy Education Secretary Carolyn Dumaresq, recounted how PDE initiated the probe “based on the statistical improbability that the students made these erasures themselves.”

But PDE then allowed the school to conduct its own investigation, “which did not yield clear conclusions notwithstanding the overwhelming evidence of testing irregularities,” the letter said.

In February of that year, according to the Philadelphia Inquirer, CCCS attorney Francis J. Catania had written to Dumaresq that the school’s investigation “uncovered absolutely no evidence of testing improprieties or irregularities” – instead establishing that “improvements in PSSA test scoring are the direct result of hard work, innovative educational programming and persistent preparation by the students, teachers, administrators and parents at CCCS, and not some purported nefarious conduct or ‘cheating.'”

Catania suggested the erasures were due to test-taking strategies taught to the students.

Nevertheless, after the school reported the inconclusive results, “PDE returned to complete its investigation,” according to Dumaresq’s letter. PDE then spelled out strict testing protocols that the school said it would follow, including 24-hour security cameras where the tests are stored and in all classrooms in which students take them. In addition, PDE sent outside monitors to supervise all test administrations.

Through its history, CCCS struggled to make Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP), the test score and performance targets under the federal No Child Left Behind Act. The school made AYP in 2004 but then fell short for four years in a row from 2005 through 2008.

A fifth year of failing to meet targets would have triggered sanctions under NCLB, including a potential change in management.

The scores climbed in 2009, and for three years in a row, through 2011, they were high enough for the school to earn Adequate Yearly Progress status, an indicator that enhanced the school’s credibility in the Chester community. The school’s enrollment saw continued growth.

After the strict test protocols were put in place in 2012, proficiency rates at CCCS plummeted by an average of 30 percentage points in every grade and subject. In letters to parents and the media, the school blamed the drop on budget cuts.

Since then, scores have remained low – similar to scores of some Chester-Upland district schools.

That district has been in dire financial straits for decades, most recently exacerbated by its huge payments to CCCS and two other charters. Due to quirks in the state charter funding formula, the district sends $40,000 for each special education student at a charter, a figure that far outstrips any other in the state and has helped to virtually bankrupt Chester schools.

This fall, when it was unclear whether Chester’s district schools could afford to open their doors, Gov. Wolf sought a rescue plan for the district in which, among other actions, the payments to the charters for special education students would be lowered to $16,000. The charters, including CCCS, agreed to accept a payment of $27,000 per student as part of a compromise plan that was approved by the courts…

The settlement with Sciamanna was the result of a negotiation. The state Department of Education, which brought the complaint in October 2013, had initially sought permanent revocation of her credentials but settled for the two-year suspension.

A review of the state’s website listing disciplinary actions against Pennsylvania educators shows most of those implicated in the cheating scandal in Philadelphia received harsher punishments than did Sciamanna. For example, the five Philadelphia School District teachers identified by the state for disciplinary action in 2014 – Radovan Bratic, Michael Reardon, Phyllis Patselas, Alene Goldstein, and Deborah Edwards Dillard – all had to surrender their teaching certifications.

Categories Charter Schools, Cheating, Testing

Annette Marcus: Why I Stopped Working at Harlem Success Academy Charter Schools

By dianeravitch
November 24, 2015 //
26

This comment was posted today. I don’t usually disclose the names of writers unless they disclose it themselves. I googled the author and she is real.

 

Having worked for Eva from 2006 to 2012* I got to know Paul Fucalaro and saw him in action. I saw him belittle and undercut teachers, and browbeat students with merciless drill. Since Harlem Success was not open in 2002, his methods preceded Eva’s adoption of them. If the Queens School you mention was PS 65, its principal was also brought on board for HSA”s start. Mr. Fucalaro is a large man, not subtle or gentle in his methods, probably significantly scary to young children. Avuncular maybe, but a little sinister too. Early on, ( 2008, 9?) he and I were asked to evaluate a young teacher who was up for re hire. She was one of those young people who genuinely love children and interacted with them intuitively and effectively. She was also knowledgeable in science, the subject she was being hired to teach. We both walked out of our observation agreeing how impressed we were. The next thing I knew, she had been fired. The word in those days when people were let go was that they ” didn’t get the school culture.” We now know that means they wanted to treat children as human beings rather than “test taking machines,” or robots who cannot question, talk, play, laugh, or, God forbid, enjoy learning.
If tests were NOT used as a measure of success, or Success, it is doubtful Eva would have gotten this far. Not until schools, charter or otherwise, are judged by their success as places of learning, creativity and joy, and the scourge of test prep and drill is gone, will real teachers, not taskmasters like Mr. Fucalaro, feel welcome in them.

 
Annette Marcus

 

* I worked on setting up an inquiry based science curriculum for Success Academies. It was fairly free of test prep until 4th grade. When Eva extended HSA into MIddle school and wanted students to take high school regents exams in 6th and 8th grade, I quit.

Categories Charter Schools, Discipline and Suspensions, Harlem Success Academy, Testing

Conservative Think Tank: Eva’s Schools Are a Progressive Ideal

By dianeravitch
November 24, 2015 //
35

A reader sent this link to a speech about Eva Moskowitz’s charter schools, delivered at the Manhattan Institute, which is New York’s premier conservative think tank. The speaker is named Charles Upton Sahm. I googled him and could not find any information about him, other than a piece in the Daily Beast defending the Common Core.

 

Sahm here defends the Success Academy schools against their critics. He describes them as idyllic. The children are happy and highly motivated. The teachers are well-trained, enthusiastic, and cheerful about their work. The curriculum is rich with literature, history, constructivist math, and projects. The attrition rate is no different from city public schools. Despite published reports, the teacher turnover is very low because they are so happy. The charters not only take a fair share of students with disabilities and ELLs, but many of them leave that status because SA remedies their needs. He admits that the schools don’t take the most disabled children.

 

He makes it seem as though Eva should be chancellor of the public schools, so every school could be equally rich in learning and joy, and of course, the millions that the hedge fund managers give to her.

 

One new fact that I had been searching for: He acknowledges that in the first two eighth grade graduating classes not a single student was able to pass the admissions test for entry to one of the city’s highly selective high schools. Now, this is puzzling. If these students are so well educated in math and science and literature, starting in the earliest grades, if they knock the socks off the state tests, why are they not acing the test for schools like Stuyvesant, Bronx Science, Townsend Harris, Brooklyn Tech, Bard, and a few others? These schools have small numbers of black and Hispanic students, and the general assumption is they were ill-prepared. But why are Eva’s graduates unable to pass this test? If you are well educated, if you have mastered the tested subjects, you should be prepared for any test, not just the one you prepared for.

 

 

It is a puzzlement.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Testing

Nassau County (NY) Superintendents Tell Cuomo to Drop Test-Based Teacher Evaluation

By dianeravitch
November 23, 2015 //
40

The superintendents association of Nassau County (Long Island), Néw York, have called on the state to stop evaluating teachers by test scores. Nassau County has some of the state’s most successful schools.

“They wrote that they understand the need for a system that ensures highly effective instruction, but said “the exaggerated use of student test data” undermines that goal. The letter cited position papers by the American Educational Research Association and the American Statistical Association that question such use of student test data.

“Equally flawed, they said, has been the attempt to devise a rating system for the vast majority of educators who teach subjects or grade levels not associated with the state exams in English language arts and math given to students in grades three through eight.”

The full text of the document is included in the link.

Categories Education Reform, New York, Teacher Evaluations, Testing

Florida: This Child Says the Tests Are Pointless

By dianeravitch
November 21, 2015 //
15

Bonnie Cunard Margolin is a blogger and parent activist in Florida. Her daughter did not take the state and local tests, and her mom is very proud of her.

 

Margolin writes:

 

This year, I have opted my 6th grade daughter out of all district and state testing. So, yesterday and today, while her classmates were taking the district test/ practice FSA writing assessment, she wrote an essay, on her own, instead. Here it is.
Julianne M. Cunard

ELA 6 ADV
18 September 2015
Testing: I Can Do the Math.
Learning is not just about taking a test. It is about understanding a lesson, not about sitting at a desk for hours, failing as you go. If you wanted to educate children, why is there an FSA, FCAT, FAIR, PARCC, LSAT, MCAT? What do all of these words mean to you? Is standardized testing effective in education? I can tell you what tests mean to me.
Testing is something I refuse to be a part of, even teachers don’t like these tests. From the article, “Putting it to the Test”, the author writes, “In September, Susan Bowles, a kindergarten teacher at Chiles Elementary School, received widespread buzz when she openly refused to administer the computer-based Florida Assessments for Instruction in reading, or FAIR.” Teachers are forced to read the script, exactly as written, scared of losing their jobs if not. There should not have to be a time in school where anyone feels extremely worried. At school, students should feel relieved and secure. Yet then, these tests come along.
If I walked into a room and saw everyone taking a district\state test, I would not be happy because the students are not learning anything. The author writes, “Teaching is an art. It is about connection. It is not about getting ready for a test that is designed 70 percent to fail. Our best teachers are leaving because they are being forced to do things in the classroom that they know is not for OUR KIDS! They are leaving for OUR KIDS!” That statement right there tells me that teachers have had enough. This is a good reason why testing is not good for education.
Teachers shouldn’t have to quit because they are forced to do something, it is their life, their class. Oh, but no… that teacher can’t talk about it. It’s all so “secret” because nobody knows how to opt out, except for the kids that know. They know how to opt out. They know they won’t fail their grade because of a test. They know they will sit there for an hour, sitting and doing nothing, everyone looking at them. They know they will get an NR2. Other kids don’t. They don’t know what an NR2 means. They DON’T know, they don’t… but they should. The one thing everyone knows in that classroom is that these district\state tests are unnecessary and ineffective.
Let’s see how the leaders would like it if we gave THEM a standardized test. Are you shocked that I said that? Well, nobody realizes how bad these tests are. One person says they are fine, but someone else will say not to take it. What do they do? This is way too much pressure for children… WAY too much. THEY ARE KIDS, TESTING FROM THIRD GRADE THROUGH HIGH SCHOOL. Innocent children testing every day. What did they ever do to you?
Some think that testing is not a big deal. It isn’t but when it’s every day, like standardized testing is, I believe that it is an outrage. From the article,”Mom- Why My Kids Won’t Be Taking the New Florida Standards Assessment Test”, the author writes, “They have to be quiet, have alternate scheduling, sit in a single classroom and learn NOTHING during “testing season” because others are testing. This is time they’ll never get back in their education.” The author is correct. What about the kids?
What if everyone wants to opt out, they know, but can’t because the leaders are telling them not to. The kids shouldn’t be punished for other’s repetitive mistakes.
There were seven hours of FSA testing that I did NOT do last year. Others did. Don’t you feel bad for the children, wasting all of that time? Yes, it’s a waste of time. I should know, I did the math, and I don’t need a test to prove it.
‪#‎ThisMomGivesHerAnA‬+

Categories Florida, Opt Out, Students, Testing
« Older Entries
Newer Entries »