Chilling Words
st spring, before my fourth graders took the Smarter Balanced Assessment, I knew that it would not be a test worth administering.
In addition to knowing that it would be long, developmentally inappropriate, and unlikely to inform my instruction in any meaningful way, I also knew that I would be required to sign a security agreement that said I could not view the test as my students took it. (Were they hiding something or did they really just have that little respect for teachers?)
I also knew a few things that I don’t think many people know even now – that, for example, the “adaptive” version of the test had never been field tested (they used the “fixed” version as the field test, claiming that results from that test would inform the “adaptive” version), and that the “adaptive” claim itself was pretty much bunk.
So, when I got a note from a parent a week or two before the test began asking for my professional opinion on the upcoming test, you might think that I would have been able to do the type of things doctors get to do when parents ask about treatments: explain the benefits (um…), and the risks (your child is being Chilling Words | Save Maine Schools:
