A Veteran Principal Describes Testing Day (Dave Sherman)
Dave Sherman is an elementary school principal in a suburb north of Chicago. He described a day of testing in Education Week, March 5, 2009.
Tuesday was the first day of [state tests]for all 3rd through 8th grade students in the State of Illinois. This is a big deal for Illinois schools…. Each school’s percentage of students passing the tests will be published in all of the newspapers. Schools will be ranked and judged based solely on these tests. The pressure is on all of us: students, teachers, administrators, secretaries, custodians, bus drivers, postal employees, UPS guys, and the milk delivery man. (OK, maybe not the milkman).
I find this to be a very frustrating time of year. Right now, my office is filled with boxes of test booklets, answer sheets, paper rulers, testing manuals, and rules and regulations for teachers to read. The materials all had to be counted, labeled, and numbered, and each student was assigned a specific booklet and answer sheet. This was labor intensive work for our office staff which kept them very busy for a week. Then, whole-school and classroom