Excessive Standardized Testing in First Grade is No Fairy Tale
In 2013, I shared a post written by a New York City elementary teacher, entitled “Data Shows Not Enough Teaching.” She is back today with an update, and although there has been a change in administration in New York City, testing at her school is excessive as ever.
By Katie Lapham.
While the public in New York is becoming increasingly outraged over Pearson’s Common Core assessments in English-language arts (ELA) and math, which, for 2015, will be administered for six days in April, little is known about the Common Core-aligned interim assessments that are given to many New York City (NYC) students in grades K – 5. As far as I know, few parents (if any) are notified of these assessments and teachers receive test details just one day prior to the start of testing.
The week of February 9, 2015, over the course of four days, my NYC elementary school administered standardized mid-year benchmark assessments in grades K-5. They were untimed and make-ups had to be given to absent students. In grades 3-5, Schoolnet’s Common Core-aligned periodic assessment was used for ELA and the Common Core-aligned GO Math! middle-of-year assessment was given for math. Grades K-2 used Pearson’s Common Core-aligned ReadyGEN end of unit 2 assessment for ELA and the middle-of-year GO Math! assessment for math.
I administered the first grade benchmarks to my class of 25 students. Pearson’s ReadyGEN ELA assessment was comprised of five multiple choice comprehension questions and five multiple choice vocabulary questions. It also contained a writing question for which students stated an opinion and included a reason (a detail from the text) to support their opinion. While students were given a copy of the realistic fiction reading passage, I was instructed to read it aloud to them three times. From the groans and sighs emitted from my students as I commenced the second reading, I deduced that they didn’t find the passage to be particularly riveting.
A number of questions and answer choices, which I also read aloud to them, were poorly constructed and confusing. A vocabulary question tricked students by offering large and huge as possible answer choices for What does enormous mean? For one of the comprehension questions – and for the writing piece – students were required to go back to the text to get the answer. I would have lost points on the test if I hadn’t re-read the part of the text that contained the information. Students had to know where to go in the text and they had to be able to both decode and comprehend the paragraph in order to answer the questions correctly.
As this test was administered in a whole class setting, I found it exasperating trying to make sure the students were paying attention and answering the right question. I observed that some of my strongest readers randomly picked answers – the wrong ones – and theorized that they weren’t paying close attention Excessive Standardized Testing in First Grade is No Fairy Tale - Living in Dialogue:
