When testing trumps teaching, the students suffer
In August, the nightmares start.
Every teacher experiences the excitement, worry and sometimes dread as the first day of school approaches. It's a combination of Christmas Eve and April 14.
Like most teachers, I spent the majority of my summer carefully crafting lesson plans. I spent weeks reading new books to add to my course and worked particularly hard on creating a week's worth of team building activities to start the year by building a positive classroom environment.
Then, at the second day of professional development (before the students even arrived), I was handed the eight-page district assessment calendar.
Within the first 13 days of school, I was expected to administer three different mandated assessments. So there went the classroom contract for behavior, there went the applications for class jobs, there went the classroom scavenger hunt. Instead of spending those first few weeks getting to know my students' names, interests and personalities, I was forced to hand them test after test, slowly chipping away at the positive atmosphere I wanted so badly to cultivate.
This year, I have to subject my eighth-grade students to 6,600 minutes of district-mandated testing. That’s 110 hours. That’s nearly 16 entire seven-hour school days.
Eighth-grade students in Hartford Public Schools are required to take 25 mandated district and state-wide assessments between late August and early June. Thirteen percent of the CONTINUE READING: When testing trumps teaching, the students suffer - Hartford Courant