Testing: From Bad to Worse
This month third grade students in Indiana have had their instruction interrupted so that they could take the ISTEP Applied Skills tests, and the Indiana IREAD-3 test.
Next month the second part of the ISTEP will be administered (testing window: April 28 through May 13).
A YEAR’S WORTH OF TESTING
Last school year (2012-13) I asked a friend who teaches third grade in one of our public schools how much time was spent on testing. He thought about ISTEP, IREAD-3, Acuity, DIBELS, and some other locally chosen tests (See here for a list of state assessments) and came up with this response…
Actual time spent on doing the tests = 54 hours, add an extra 20 hours for DIBELS…Add another 25 hours for test prep. This would be test strategies, getting familiar with the format but primarily a huge chunk of review for the tests or trying to quickly cover a topic in case it’s on the test but we have not had the chance to teach it yet.
That’s about 100 hours devoted to testing or test prep…and doesn’t include what I would consider to be appropriate classroom assessments such as reading comprehension tests, math quizzes, spelling tests, and content area chapter tests.
The school day for elementary students in our district is about 6 3/4 hours.