As an educator, I wonder MANY things: were these kids raised by wolves? does anyone teach manners anymore? do children have attention spans longer than 15 seconds? what was she thinking when she got dressed today? Why are bodily functions so funny? and why don't children even consider respect important anymore?
As we finish off a week of the most insane scheduling nightmare I've ever seen, I'm really wondering if legislators consider how the laws they make affect the children and educators?
Like most states, we have state standardized testing, in Texas it is called TAKS. The state is trying to move away from generalized testing and toward EOC's, End Of Course exams, but this year we're doing more of the EOC's and we still had to do TAKS testing too. I've lost approximately two weeks of educational time with my students testing them to see what they know, but with zero consequences for failure except at the junior level.
We had to schedule testing all freshman, sophomores and juniors at least twice each. What makes this more of a nightmare is because the testing is end of the course, sometimes we have sophomores or juniors taking freshman courses or freshman taking junior or sophomore courses. Basically, we spent the entire week disrupting a little bit of everyone's schedule.
The past two days, most of my students were testing but I was in my classroom with my four or five stragglers who were not testing. Today and tomorrow, none of my students are testing, but I am stuck in the cafeteria with several hundred students. It was an absolute disaster. My students are trying to finish reading a book. They are not very focused readers as it is, in a cafeteria filled with crazy students, it wasn't pretty.
So instead of teaching and learning, we're relocating, testing, corralling, monitoring, pacing. Legislators talk about adding days to our calendar. Why don't they just give us BACK the days we have. We take two weeks for TAKS (next year STAAR) and two weeks for AP testing and now a week for EOC, which next year will be two. That is six weeks of testing. While not all students will test for all six weeks, the testing disrupts learning for many or most students much of the time.
And on top of all the required testing, we take two more weeks for semester exams and another two weeks for district wide benchmark assessments. Now we're are at nearly ten weeks of testing, give a day or two for each grade level. Imagine how much more we could be learning if we were TEACHING all those days.
Don't even get me started on how much better my students would be doing if I were allowed to teach the way I want to, to hold students and parents accountable for results and work, but here in May, two weeks left to go for the school year, I feel like I've barely scratched the surface with my students.
It just prompts me to ask SERIOUSLY???? as the state heaps more and more regulations and testing on our shoulders and asks us to do more next year with so much less. Why is it so hard to make decisions that make sense. I want to sponsor a law that requires all legislators who make laws requiring state tests/testing to take all such tests and have to visit a school once a year during the state testing to help with scheduling and administering the tests.
I can't imagine they would continue to test us to death once they realized the kind of torture it is for the students and teachers. I tested in three rooms today. In each room was at least one student who just made patterns in the tests and one other who was sleeping, and one other who seemed to be looking everywhere but actually at the test. Already more than 20% of the students I saw today were just blowing off the test.
Seriously, let's spend more time teaching and learning, save a few million dollars and thousands of trees. I understand a need for accountability, but can anyone produce a single study showing me that students are actually more educated now that we test for it? I doubt it, very seriously.
As we finish off a week of the most insane scheduling nightmare I've ever seen, I'm really wondering if legislators consider how the laws they make affect the children and educators?
Like most states, we have state standardized testing, in Texas it is called TAKS. The state is trying to move away from generalized testing and toward EOC's, End Of Course exams, but this year we're doing more of the EOC's and we still had to do TAKS testing too. I've lost approximately two weeks of educational time with my students testing them to see what they know, but with zero consequences for failure except at the junior level.We had to schedule testing all freshman, sophomores and juniors at least twice each. What makes this more of a nightmare is because the testing is end of the course, sometimes we have sophomores or juniors taking freshman courses or freshman taking junior or sophomore courses. Basically, we spent the entire week disrupting a little bit of everyone's schedule.
The past two days, most of my students were testing but I was in my classroom with my four or five stragglers who were not testing. Today and tomorrow, none of my students are testing, but I am stuck in the cafeteria with several hundred students. It was an absolute disaster. My students are trying to finish reading a book. They are not very focused readers as it is, in a cafeteria filled with crazy students, it wasn't pretty.
So instead of teaching and learning, we're relocating, testing, corralling, monitoring, pacing. Legislators talk about adding days to our calendar. Why don't they just give us BACK the days we have. We take two weeks for TAKS (next year STAAR) and two weeks for AP testing and now a week for EOC, which next year will be two. That is six weeks of testing. While not all students will test for all six weeks, the testing disrupts learning for many or most students much of the time.
And on top of all the required testing, we take two more weeks for semester exams and another two weeks for district wide benchmark assessments. Now we're are at nearly ten weeks of testing, give a day or two for each grade level. Imagine how much more we could be learning if we were TEACHING all those days.
Don't even get me started on how much better my students would be doing if I were allowed to teach the way I want to, to hold students and parents accountable for results and work, but here in May, two weeks left to go for the school year, I feel like I've barely scratched the surface with my students.
It just prompts me to ask SERIOUSLY???? as the state heaps more and more regulations and testing on our shoulders and asks us to do more next year with so much less. Why is it so hard to make decisions that make sense. I want to sponsor a law that requires all legislators who make laws requiring state tests/testing to take all such tests and have to visit a school once a year during the state testing to help with scheduling and administering the tests.
I can't imagine they would continue to test us to death once they realized the kind of torture it is for the students and teachers. I tested in three rooms today. In each room was at least one student who just made patterns in the tests and one other who was sleeping, and one other who seemed to be looking everywhere but actually at the test. Already more than 20% of the students I saw today were just blowing off the test.
Seriously, let's spend more time teaching and learning, save a few million dollars and thousands of trees. I understand a need for accountability, but can anyone produce a single study showing me that students are actually more educated now that we test for it? I doubt it, very seriously.
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