Teacher: ‘ We know that what we are doing to children is wrong’
Some teachers in Florida are speaking out about their concerns that students this year will face way too many standardized assessments — even after the governor, Rick Scott (R), has admitted children are being over-tested.
This video from Fox 35 in Orlando, shows four educators in central Florida being interviewed about the new school year. It is worth watching not for the great detail of information (which isn’t there) but for the genuine emotion and concern that these educators express about the state of public education in their state. As one of the teachers says, they are not anomalies but reflective of what many teachers feel around the country.
Elementary school teacher Melissa Johnson, for example, says: “We know that what we are doing to children is wrong and that’s where we are unhappy.” She is referring to the amount of standardized testing imposed on students and the teach-to-the-test philosophy that dominates in schools and states where test scores are the chief metric of assessment. In Florida, half of a teacher’s evaluation comes from student test scores.
While the video interview doesn’t detail the amount of tests that students take, the number is high — so high that earlier this year the governor admitted it was too much and issued an executive order eliminating one statewide 11th-grade standardized assessment for English Language Arts. That still leaves more than a dozen required standardized tests for students in some counties. For example, in Duval County, students in K-5 take 14 assessments and students in grades 6-12 take as many as 23 per grade.
Florida adopted the Common Core State Standards in 2010 and signed onto a consortium of states, known as PARCC, writing new standardized tests aligned to the standards. But as pushback against the Core grew, Scott “rebranded” them in Florida, changing the name to the Florida Standards and making some changes but keeping most of the Core intact. He also pulled the state out of PARCC and purchased a new test, calling it the Florida Standards Assessments, that is supposed to be aligned to the Florida Standards. There are many other standardized tests given in the state as well.
A report issued earlier this year by the state Department of Education detailed the number of standardized tests students take in different districts:
As indicated by districts, over half of Florida’s districts administered at least five or more assessments throughout the year, per grade in the grade spans of K-5, 6-8, and 9-12.For grades K-5, counts include the Florida Assessments forTeacher: ‘ We know that what we are doing to children is wrong’ - The Washington Post:
