Return of the Living Pratice Tests

    There are no flood days in New York City. Kids in other cities enjoy them, but not us. We won't get a day off for the monsoon or a tornado either. I hope. Snowdays? Unlikely, buddy. This is New York City.
    I'm glad I came today, (not that it was difficult, the UWS was well cleared, the subways were running on time, a little quicker since all those Catholic School kids were at home) I learned that we are going to have two more "Test Simulations" in the next two weeks. So that means twelve periods of instruction gone. That is in addition to the two days of testing we had last week, not to mention the battery of English Practice Tests we gave leading up to that test.
    These tests move like a zombie army, no reason to exist other than existence, no consciousness behind their slow progress, just an unstoppable need for brains. Children's brains.
Are tests used to identify children's needs and help them? Only in the most abstract sense- teacher are told their test scores and then asked to group the children accordingly. Do schools with a large number of low-performing students get reading specialists to help them? No, they are warned that if they don't get their scores up they will be closed.
    My school was closed some years ago. All that happened was that the name of the school was changed, one faculty member was excessed, and everyone else came back to work the next year as if nothing happened. So what good was that? What good do all these practice tests do?
    They allow the people in charge to say that they are doing something. Pratice tests may not prepare students for real tests as much as, for example, learning the material that is covered on the test helps, but it does give the appearance of helping in a more explicit way than regular classroom instruction does. Do you get the feeling that teachers aren't trusted to do their jobs?
What does closing a school do? It sends the impression that something happened, without doing anything. Like practice tests.
    Students need help based on their needs, just like teachers need help based on their needs. Classrom time should be spent learning, not testing. Tests should be used for diagnosis not punishment. Unfortunately those who believe that teachers are not preparing their students for the tests, on which the very existence of the school depends, force teacher into spending large protions of their instructional time testing rather than teaching, and the paltry "Staff Developement" that is built into the school year is mostly spent talking about testing, rather than learning about teaching.
    For now I have to postpone the research project we started last week. The zombies are coming. Time to barricade the door.

Comments

[Berna]

Oh how I agree. I totally couldn't even make it to school on Monday as there were no buses in my Highbridge neighborhood which too was not plowed. My goal Baychester Avenue. Can we say, "not happening and mayor Bloomberg 2 feet of snow calls for closed schools because there are 5 boroughs in NYC not just one.

[He Who Can't]

Do you also agree with the zombie like nature of high stakes testing?