So There’s A Moratorium. Now What?
Those seeking a moratorium on using high stakes tests to judge teachers seem to have gotten what they asked for. What happens now?
Remember that a “moratorium” is nothing more than ‘a suspension of activity.’ It does not imply any pro-active behavior or a re-examination of current policies. It’s merely a time of doing nothing. Should we celebrate because Bill Gates, Education Secretary Arne Duncan, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, Washington (DC) Superintendent Kaya Henderson, the American Federation of Teachers and the National Education Association have gotten what they wanted? I don’t think so.
This very limited moratorium means that scores on the new Common Core standardized tests won’t be used to evaluate teachers in many places. That’s what some might call a necessary but hardly sufficient action.
This moratorium doesn’t mean that a truce has been called between the warring sides in the battle over teacher job protection and evaluation. That war is ongoing, sadly.
And this moratorium doesn’t mean that school districts are now going to examine the role or amount of standardized bubble testing.
And there’s a lot of it [1]. Take Lee County, Florida, recently in the news for flirting with the possibility of defying the state on its testing requirements. Believe it or not, that system will be administering a standardized test to some it its students every single day of the school year. Reporter Emily Atteberry of the News-Press wrote, “If the testing calendar is approved, there will be an exam administered every day of Lee’s 180-day school year. A News-Press analysis of the district’s tentative testing calendar found that there are 175 tests administered over 95 testing windows throughout the year. Some of the testing windows are more than a month long. While there aren’t 175 different tests, many are administered multiple times throughout the year.”
For a close look at the staggering amount of testing there, here are the testing calendars for elementary, middle and high schools there.
On his blog, Secretary Duncan wrote, “Where tests are redundant, or not sufficiently helpful for instruction, they cost precious time that teachers and kids can’t afford. Too much testing can rob school buildings of joy, So There’s A Moratorium. Now What? | Taking Note: