Tennessee Parents - Reclaiming Public Education for our children
  • HOME
  • OUR VOICES/BLOG
  • SUBSCRIBE
  • CONTACT US

3 years lost per student to testing...

1/22/2014

 
We had a meeting this week at my middle school in MNPS regarding the upcoming TN Writing Assessment. We are told we must do the practice online test, which will take our entire class time for a day. Sometime before the practice, we are required to enter the name, student ID, and birth date of each of our students. We are then supposed to score each of these practice tests. The actual assessment will take another full day. These tests don't count toward the students' grades nor the teachers' evaluation. That's a lot of lost time that could have been used for planning and actual teaching.

This link provides some examples of prompts. They are rather complicated for your average 10/11-year-old.
http://tncore.org/english_language_arts/writing_test/fifth_grade_prompts.aspx 

(This post was written by a Metro Nashville middle school teacher. Her name has been withheld to protect her anonymity.)
 

Tennessee Parents are tired of their children missing out on instruction time for seemingly useless testing. Teachers across the state estimate that 30-60 days of instruction are lost each year due to test preparation and administration. 


Please click HERE to read an excellent article about how testing is taking 1/4 of a school year away from students in Hamilton County, TN.  

1/4 year testing x 13 years of school per student = 3 years lost to standardized testing
 
This is unacceptable! 

If you are a school board member or Superintendent: Please talk with your teachers and ask them what tests, if any, they believe actually help guide their instruction. And then mandate only those tests. 

If you are a legislator:  Please consider passing legislation that would reduce the amount of standardized testing forced on our children by the state Department of Education. Please also consider introducing that would allow parents to "opt-out" of testing for their children and force school districts and schools to fully disclose every test that is given to their students throughout the year. 


Comments are closed.

    Authors:
    real parents & real teachers
    from TN

    They are afraid to speak up and risk their jobs... They want to protect their children... This blog is for them:  Their voices need to be heard.

    These blogs are emailed to these TN officials:  
    the TN Board of Education, 
    the TN Commissioner of Education,
    the 99 TN House Representatives,

    the 33 TN Senators,
    the Governor of TN,
    every Superintendent in TN,
    hundreds of locally elected school board members across TN,
    and parents... lots and lots of parents.

    Categories

    All
    ALEC
    Arne Duncan
    ASD
    Barbic
    Campaign Contributions
    Charter
    Common Core
    Consultants
    CRA
    Crisis
    EOCs
    ESL
    Evaluations
    Faux Parents
    Governor
    Haslam
    Huffman
    Kindergarten
    KIPP
    Laws
    Legislators
    Lobbyist
    Mcqueen
    NAEP
    Next Gen Science Standards
    Opt Out
    PARCC
    Parents
    Petition
    Plan
    Pre-K
    Protest
    Pta
    Ravitch
    Reform
    RELAY
    Resolution
    Rocketship
    RSD
    SAT10
    School Board
    School Board
    Score
    Sneaky Politician
    Student Data
    Student Privacy
    Students
    Studentsfirst
    Superintendent
    TCAP
    Teachers
    Tenure
    Testing
    Tfa
    TNDOE
    TNReady
    Tree
    Tripod
    TVAAS
    University Of Memphis
    US DOE
    Vouchers

    Archives

    March 2017
    February 2016
    November 2015
    October 2015
    September 2015
    July 2015
    May 2015
    April 2015
    March 2015
    February 2015
    January 2015
    December 2014
    November 2014
    October 2014
    September 2014
    August 2014
    July 2014
    June 2014
    May 2014
    April 2014
    March 2014
    February 2014
    January 2014
    December 2013
    November 2013
    October 2013

    RSS Feed

Powered by Create your own unique website with customizable templates.