Standardized Testing Causing Other Students in School to Not Have Classes

[JPZenger]

At my kids' public high school, they often have not had academic classes while students in other grades were taking state-mandated standardized tests.

At times, they were told to come to school late, or watched movies instead of having class. The goal was to be very quiet and not have movement in the hallways so it did not distract students taking the almightly test. The school district also says they need most of the classrooms for the test-takers, and need most of the teachers as proctors.

This school district is also stretching out the standardized tests to as many days as possible so that the students do not get tired while they are taking the test. Therefore, it affects weeks of school days.

I thought it was only a problem at my local school district, but my friend says the same thing happens in his school district. How widespread is this situation?

Isn't this the ultimate hypocrisy - that we cannot teach most of our students, because other students are being measured on how well they were taught?

[elleng]

1. Yes, the ULTIMATE hypocrisy.

[gopiscrap]

2. My wife is a 30 year teacher and was telling me about this

she was also saying that all the joy of teaching is gone because of this shit. They don't really teach anymore, just make kids memorize answers on a fucking test. And folks, it's all about fucking money!

[Starry Messenger]

3. I was "mom" to several kids who had no place to

go at school while other kids were testing. They'd come hang with their friends in my class, or if they were my students they'd come in and work on their projects. At least we know where they were, but they do miss lots of other class time, unfortunately.

Our testing time is a whole month of block periods. The kids are usually cranky and drained one week in.

[mbperrin]

4. All of these things are mandated by the state.

The tests must be given during a given window of time, so the state is stretching it, not the district.

Distracting materials must be removed or covered in testing rooms, dictionaries and a thesaurus, calculators, pencils, erasers, tape, special logged restroom passes, handwritten seating charts for each testing session, nobody but proctors in the halls, and a whole lot more are all covered by TEA.

In our school, the second floor is used for testing so that traffic can move more normally on the ground floor, but there are not enough lunch periods and conference periods for test-displaced teachers to have a room every period, so dozens of classes go to the auditorium for movies under supervision by a handful of certified substitutes, since most of the teachers are testing.

Under the new regime of 15 standardized tests, up from 4, there will be 45 days of testing in a 180 day school year. If you do a one day review for each testing day, that means 90 days out of 180 will be given over to testing and test-related activity. This is why teachers converged on Austin to get the number of tests reduced to 5, still more than just last year, and the press covered it as a cut in rigor. Wrong. If school is going to be more than testing, there can only be so many tests.

All districts are covered, so all schools have the same experience you're having. At our large urban high school, high absenteeism also guarantees extra days of makeups, since a minimum of 95% of all students MUST be tested, or you become unacceptable or "F" by default.

It's a mess, and very profitable for Pearson, the testing people.

It's hypocrisy by the state, but the districts are just using the resources available, which are fewer than 2 years ago, after the state cut state aid to schools by $5.4 BILLION.

[Rosa Luxemburg]

5. We still teach while some take state test

They have packed students in so that they take two state tests a day! In the same week we are also giving seniors final exams! We are sttretched! Special ed students take the test next week so they are left in class this week. We are reviewing for the test.

[Jim Lane]

6. Stupid question from a nonparent....

I'm not up on the details of NCLB and the testing mania. Specifically, how much of this applies to nonpublic schools?

I'm wondering if there are schools (Catholic or other religious schools, old-fashioned private schools, new-fangled charter schools) where the educational philosophy is: We're not going to waste valuable time on incessant testing combined with the "teaching to the test" that it produces. We'll do the minimum of testing, and we'll spend only a small amount of time on test preparation, just to make sure the kids are familiar with the types of questions. Yes, this means our average test scores will be a bit lower, but we're pitching our school to parents who value genuine learning.

Can nonpublic schools cut way back on the testing? Are there significant numbers that cut way back on the test prep, accepting the consequence of lower average scores?

[savebigbird]

9. Surprisingly, a lot...

If non-public and charter schools want state money (vouchers) they must administer the same state mandated tests. In fact, I've read about some charter schools that boot underperforming students right before test time to boost their scores.

[Jim Lane]

11. Thanks!

I know that, just within the last couple days, someone here started a thread about what you mention -- charter schools booting students selectively, to improve their average scores.

There might be a niche for a school that grudgingly administered the tests but didn't waste much time on prep. The school would have to find parents who understood the value of learning that wasn't measured by the standardized test scores.

[LWolf]

7. When tests are high stakes,

and those stakes are getting increasingly higher, this should be no surprise. Discouraging, frustrating, morale-killing, time-wasting, yes. Surprise? No.

My school is not that bad. Our kids test in the lab during our preps, so no instructional time is wasted.

We do totally disrupt the regular PE/lab schedule for testing, for weeks at a time.

We do stretch the testing out, encouraging students to do a little every day and take their time.

When they stretch the testing out too far, they will be pulled out of regular class to eventually finish.

[Igel]

8. It's very widespread.

But there are things that can be done to mitigate it.

So in Texas schools get so many late-arrival days. This year my district was allowed 3. When most kids were testing, the seniors and juniors showed up late. I teach srs and jrs, and I was a proctor for the test.

The test coordinator arranged it so I saw all my classes those 3 days. Instead of losing 3 days, I lost 2. We worked on a project those days.

This year was a transition year. We had the old test for juniors and the new test for frosh and sophomores. When the juniors were testing the frosh and sophomores were having classes as usual on a modified bell schedule. After the test my juniors and seniors watched a science documentary. Not much choice. The test often runs over, so instead of stopping at the time in the schedule it might run over 30 minutes or an hour. The class size can contract quickly. Plus the juniors, having been cooped up for the test for 3-5 hours, are in no condition to do much. So it's a free day for them. We missed 3 days for that, and a couple of days for English language arts. We reviewed for science for a week. One of those days was "my" science, and it's wasn't a bad idea. 180 school days, 10 missed for standardized tests. Could be worse. Far worse.

A poster above said there were 45 test days. These are windows. The non-English tests for the frosh and sophomores were to fit into 10 of those days. They took 3. There was very little review time for those 3 days. Most teachers took a day or two to review, but this was high school. Spanish and other non-core classes kept on going while history and math and science reviewed for a day.

On the other hand, people forget why the tests started and how they've morphed. They started with the "Johnny Can't Read" 'revelations' from the late '70s and early '80s about kids who graduated high school illiterate and unable to do arithmetic. The standardized tests were to show mastery of the basic skills. It was later nonsense that made them more and more rigorous, because obviously the teachers weren't doing their job.

[HiPointDem]

10. "obviously the teachers weren't doing their job" = what?