Teacher: No longer can I throw my students to the testing wolves

<p>@Overtheedge‌ you too? I am shocked at the number of grammatical/spelling errors in emails/letters from teachers. I believe it will only get worse because everyone going to college will have grown up during the texting age. I am a firm believer that texting and spell check are the downfalls to proper spelling and grammar. Its funny, my friend who is a lawyer says she is appalled at letters she receives from new lawyers. She said the writing is absolutely horrid.</p>

<p>@Partyof5 - I totally agree with your friend! </p>

<p>@partyof5, “Its funny” should be “It’s funny.” </p>

<p>@greenbutton,

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<p>Please cite evidence that Pittsburgh 3rd graders take 34 standardized tests a year. This amounts to one standardized test per week.</p>

<p>My Edu program does require us to maintain B’s or better, but I believe you can earn up to 2 C’s before being dismissed from the program. My classmates seem fairly smart but I wouldn’t call them overachievers. I can’t tell you how many people I’ve seen brazenly cheat.</p>

<p>Google is your friend… Although to be specific, it looks like Pittsburgh 4th graders take 33 standardized tests a year.:</p>

<p>From Nov 2013:</p>

<p><a href=“With more than 270 tests at Pittsburgh schools this year, when is enough enough? | Pittsburgh Post-Gazette”>With more than 270 tests at Pittsburgh schools this year, when is enough enough? | Pittsburgh Post-Gazette; </p>

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<p>The implementation of Common Core testing will be a nightmare. It was piloted in a couple of area high schools, in just one subject, last year. The students are required to take pre and post tests in each subject. The tests are required to be given on computers. Our public high schools are in a wealthy district, but there are not enough computers in any of our high schools to allow every English class to take a test on computers at the same time. Which means that kids are pulled out of other classes to take the English test. It took a week to test the pilot groups… That was only one subject, and I don’t believe they tested all grades, just the Juniors. Think about it. It was a week of complete disruption, with kids pulled out of math, social studies, foreign languages, English, etc. classes to move them all through the computer lab. Now multiply that to twice a year (pre and post tests), and multiple subjects. Kids miss content in the classes they miss, and teachers have many missing students from each class for a week or more.</p>

<p>For some reason they could not just send Mrs. Smith’s first period English class to the computer lab to take the test during first period. I believe that’s because the subject test took longer than our 50 minute periods, and each subject test had to be completed in one sitting. </p>

<p>This year the Common Core tests will be given in English and Math for everyone. My youngest, a senior, won’t be affected because the AP classes are not common core based, and those students will not take the tests. </p>

<p>@MaineLonghorn‌ When I am on a forum, all bets are off regarding grammar and spelling. When I am doing something professionally, you can bet that everything is in good order. I hardly ever use an apostrophe when I am on a forum.</p>

<p>I am an elementary teacher. I share Greenbutton’s opinions above. I began teaching in the 80s and after a dozen years I left the profession to raise my own kids. I have reentered public school teaching and am surprised/shocked/dismayed/saddened by the changes I have seen in children from when I began my career to now. Maybe being “out of the loop” for 15 years made the contrast in kids more drastic as I did not see the changes gradually occur. </p>

<p>I am referring to the number of kids with learning disabilities, OCD, anxiety, severe peanut allergies, poor social skills and extremely short attention spans. Way back in the 1980s I taught second and third graders, 30 in a classroom, and I usually had one, MAYBE two with an IEP. One or two had what we would say looked and sounded like ADHD. But I had never heard of a life threatening peanut allergy, kids with OCD or anxiety, or kids that couldn’t sit in a chair or on the floor and listen to a story or directions for an activity. Today I have 24 kids of the same age as ‘back then’. I have two with allergies so severe I had to be trained on how to administer an epipen last week. I have 3 with severe enough learning disabilities that in third grade they are only reading at a first grade level. I have three on medication for ADHD, one with sensory issues such that he won’t eat lunch in front of the other kids in case he gags and when he doesn’t eat his behavior challenges are magnified in the afternoon, one that sees a counselor for anger issues, three that I am about to put on a hourly behavior contract because they do not follow directions and continually disrupt the rest of the class. And then there is about half the class that can’t sit still so they are rocking in their chair, finding reasons to get up and walk across the room and bothering others as they walk, crawling and rolling on the floor, constantly getting in each other’s body space and fidgeting with ‘stuff’. At the end of the day I find bits of shredded papers all over the floor and pencils that have been snapped in half by the anxious kids. </p>

<p>I am also in one of the wealthiest areas of the country, and in a school district that scores very well on standardized tests. All of my students come from upper middle class families and most are in two parent stable families.</p>

<p>I am currently at my desk taking a break from lesson plans, emailing parents, correcting work and doing the endless paperwork teachers are required to do. Please forgive me any grammar or spelling errors as I am not going to go back and edit my post.</p>

<p>I don’t know what the causes of these changes are, but I have to wonder, is the constant testing part of it, and the insistence that the early grades be more academic? Are we expecting so much out of K and first and second graders as far as sitting still and doing pen and pencil tasks even when we know a lot of that is not developmentally appropriate for 5, 6 and 7 year olds? Are we giving kids OCD and anxiety? </p>

<p>And how in the heck are teachers supposed to do all that teaching when what I described above is going on in the classroom all day long. I work 10 hours a day, a lot of that time after school is spent communicating with counselors, behavior specialists, resource teachers, and concerned parents. I will burn out before I hit retirement age.</p>

<p>We need some accountability. How about we give a pretest in September for that grades curriculum, then we give the post test in May. Skip all the other garbage in between. The results can inform the parents what their kids learned during the year and taken as a group can inform the administration about patterns that could indicate if teachers are not teaching the curriculum. By eliminating all the other tests, teachers have time to teach.</p>

<p>As for the many issues kids face growing up in today’s world, I have no ideas. Some of them have such challenges it breaks my heart. </p>

<p>@Nestalmostempty‌ my friends that are teachers echo your sentiments! They say they spend so much time on social skills and other issues, that there is no time to teach! When I took my son to college, I met another parent who was an occupational therapist. As we chatted, she stated that she sees more kids than she can handle and they too were mostly upper middle class to wealthy. Her theory was that, we no longer let kids get dirty, get on floor, do simple things like bang pots and pans. She said every toy was electronic even for babies, so if you pushed a button it lit up, or made a sound. Therefore this new generation of kids are always looking for excitement, something to happen. Also, by not letting the kids go outside and play, their motor skills are lacking. Of course she had no scientific proof, but it sort of makes sense. Also if you think about it, if your parents have more money you can afford to buy the state of the art toys. You are also more likely to have eyes watching you, so maybe you dont go out all day, etc…It definitely is an interesting theory.</p>

<p>" Are we expecting so much out of K and first and second graders as far as sitting still and doing pen and pencil tasks even when we know a lot of that is not developmentally appropriate for 5, 6 and 7 year olds? Are we giving kids OCD and anxiety?"</p>

<p>Yes, I think some school schedules that favor excessively long blocks and minimal recess or PE are not developmentally appropriate. Kids need to move. We make them sit still for so many hours and then we wonder why they get fat.</p>

<p>I also think that patience and attention span are learned and many kids today are simply not learning. I was never a fan even of the frenetic pace of sesame street and I didn’t park my kids in front of that. So much of kids’ entertainment seems based on instant gratification rather than more traditional games or creative play activities that might take a long time to get going. </p>

<p>I think another factor is basic discipline being more lacking in some homes now. When/where does a kid learn to sit quietly? We were expected to sit quietly and patiently at a dinner table when adults were talking. There was no getting up and horsing around. No interrupting the boring adult conversation. How many families expect that nowadays?</p>

<p>The allergies are a mystery to me as well. I’m sure there were always some, but it seems like half the kids we know have deadly food allergies now. I know kids with allergies to milk, soy, shellfish, tree nuts, peanuts, peas, celery to name a few, not to mention multiple kids that must be gluten-free. I try to be careful with peanut butter, but frankly, I’m afraid to feed half the kids who come into my home. Did I ever dip a spoon from the flour into the sugar and contaminate the sugar with gluten? Did the natural peanut butter drip some oil down the side when I mixed it where it could have gotten onto another container in the fridge? Did the oil I used to bake those muffins or cook dinner come from a factory that uses good practices to segregate nuts, and is that good enough for this kid, or am I mixing them up with the other kid and this kid is so sensitive it will send them to the ER? I’d better be sure to have ice cream at the party so the gluten-free kids can eat something, and I need to check the labels to make sure there’s no gluten in the ice cream. I’ll also need four separate ice cream scoops to segregate the cookie dough ice cream from the gluten-free ice cream from the soy-containing ice cream from the sorbet for the milk-free kid. Oh no! That kid ate the birthday cake and they should have eaten the special milk-free cake their parent sent along. Are they having difficulty breathing? Should we call a doctor? Where is my epipen? Is it up to date? Is it just that kids of our generation were always getting sick from the foods they ate and no one diagnosed them? Or are far more kids allergic now?</p>

<p>The case way back when was that if a kid wasn’t achieving, send him to votech. They did not have shared programs where kids get academics and job training.
Now every kid is pushed to be college ready. It’s like we are more worried about whether a kid can get into college as opposed to whether he can read or do math.
By the way, it is NOT true that many countries are ahead of us in math and science. <em>We</em> just test all our kids and countries like China send only their top 2% to high school. Is that a fair comparison?
My one son is classified and gets excellent test scores. I don’t like to hear special ed kids being blamed for teacher’s woes.
There are people who do well on tests and people who don’t. Yes, they should not focus on testing solely for kids who can’t even read. What would be the effect of moving the kids who are struggling most to a centralized school where they can have an integrated curriculum focused on teaching them academics while mastering reading?</p>

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<p>What is not true is that the international tests do not account for such differences. Again, it is the typical propaganda-like excuse used in the US. The other one being that we have more poor kids than most countries! </p>

<p>So you think the US testing all teenagers is equivalent to or can be accounted for by some statistical machination of testing data for the top 2% of Chinese teenagers? </p>

<p>Do tell. I’ve taught college statistics.</p>

<p>WOW!!! Look at Florida’s testing</p>

<p><a href=“http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/wp/2014/09/11/kindergarten-teacher-there-is-a-good-possibility-i-will-be-fired-but/”>http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/wp/2014/09/11/kindergarten-teacher-there-is-a-good-possibility-i-will-be-fired-but/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

<p>This raises so many questions, first being, how do you require a kindergartner to use a mouse? Most small kids, I would imagine, have used touch screens, they may not have the motor skills to use a mouse correctly. I bet if you follow the money, some of these required tests are manufactured by friends of state govt officials. Some of the same folks that complain about all of the mandatory testing, keep sending the same folk back in office. </p>

<p>I have read an article that presented testing days as added to the end of the school year – not something actually done, mind you, but a symbolic heads up to parents that while it might seem like little instructional time is spent on the testing, it takes days and days of learning from your children, and instead spends it on testing. ESL students, special needs students, everybody tests. Everybody is to meet an arbitrary goal set with no consideration of students as people. (Imagine a football team that is doing poorly – deformist edubusiness’ solution is to TAKE AWAY THE BALL. )</p>

<p>I think teachers should be evaluated: by peers, admins, and a benchmark of training, continuing ed, performance , and a sample of student testing. Tenure should come only after 6-8 yrs of dedicated & evaluated service. Admins should have yearly evals as well (my principal regularly schedules enrichment assemblies that are unrelated to any curricular goals. Because he can. Give me strength…) I disagree with the widespread knee-jerk reaction repeated ad nauseum that American schools are “behind”. How is educating people a race? And even if I believe that (which I don’t), I don’t buy that we are so profoundly “behind” that it is effecting the course of the country. And even if I believed THAT (which I don’t), how is the single largest blame to be laid with professional teachers? (as opposed to TFA teachers, subs, hobby teachers, etc…)</p>

<p>I read a blog called Curmudgucation – won’t link to it although it’s not personal – and it covers a lot of this better than I ever could. </p>

<p>NJ has between three and five standardized testing days per year out of 180 days. We often have the top ranking for US states in terms of education MA being one of the other top states.
Is it possible that states with poor school systems have lots of tests to keep assessing kids over and over to meet goals? Which they can’t meet if they don’t have time to learn!</p>

<p>A major contributor to our current PA gov’s previous campaign was connected to corporate charter schools. Another major contributor is well-connected to Pearson and other companies that produce — standardized tests. PA schools do PSSAs, MAP assessments, benchmarking, and now the new Keystone exams (for high school students, in addition to PSSAs). Elementary students spend about 8 days just on PSSAs, which have to be taken during state-mandated calendar dates. (but those aren’t, for the most part, full days of testing. Most are 1/2 days. But the day is nevertheless shot for instruction) I expect the correlation to our testing regime is influenced in part by leverage exerted by those who paid for it. </p>

<p>I came across another article written by a teacher about the problems with children having to take so many standardized tests. This kindergarten teacher highlights one particular state-mandated (Florida) and the problems that it brings into the classroom. It’s quite eye opening.</p>

<p><a href=“http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/wp/2014/09/11/kindergarten-teacher-there-is-a-good-possibility-i-will-be-fired-but/”>http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/wp/2014/09/11/kindergarten-teacher-there-is-a-good-possibility-i-will-be-fired-but/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

<p>I will say that the prolifertion of standardized tests was one factor in my decision to homeschool my children. I still vividly remember being so bored during those tests - I was done but the test time was not over and I was not allowed to do anything but sit still doing nothing at my desk. What a waste! It was not what I wanted for my children. Of course as teens they took SATs for college and did just fine. But standardized testing should not be required for young children in my opinion. </p>

<p>First standardized testing in NJ is 2nd grade, and is on paper and only math and English.</p>

<p>Testing kindergartners is disgusting. My daughter read chapter books in kindergarten and her best friend could not spell two or three letter words. The range of abilities is not indicative of future performance.</p>