In June of this year, it was announced that 10% of TN public school students will be involved in field testing of the Common Core test (PARCC) during the 2013-2014 school year. This field testing helps the for-profit creator of the test–Pearson–fine tune the test for the planned administration to all TN public school students during the 2014-2015 school year. Sadly, it also essentially turns our students and teachers into unpaid research and development subjects for a company that is worth approximately 1.5 BILLION dollars.
Upset parents in New York state recently created an “invoice” to highlight the costs of the Pearson Common Core field tests to the districts and students. (You can see it at this link.) Many parents refused the field testing for their children and some openly expressed their anger at Pearson and the NY Department of Education: “If Pearson wants to use my daughter to ‘field test’ during the school day,” opined Brooklyn parent Johanna Henry, “they will have to pay us... I will use the money to provide my child an enjoyable and relevant learning experience.’”
Our students will not only be denied payment for taking the PARCC field test, they will be denied valuable instruction time–time that is arguably more necessary than “helping” a testing company that could easily afford to pay children to take (and teachers to administer) this test outside of school hours. Instructional time is extremely precious, especially considering that teachers across the state estimate that 30-45 days of instruction are lost each school year due to test preparation and administration. This works out to 2-3 years of lost instruction between kindergarten and 12th grade. The PARCC field test will also create additional stress for our children, especially since the PARCC is supposed to be very different from tests our children have taken in the past. And finally, this pilot testing will increase the already ridiculous workload for our teachers and could result in pushing even more highly qualified educators out of the profession.
In addition to the educational and emotional costs of this test, TN will lose out on an untold amount of tax revenue because Pearson does not pay teachers and students to administer/take these pilot tests.
The Tennessee Department of Education has not published a list of the schools that will undergo field testing in Tennessee. Attempts to find out this information have been unsuccessful.
(This was reposted with permission from www.stoptntesting.com, a website, blog, and facebook group with a strong and rapidly growing social media presence in TN)
Upset parents in New York state recently created an “invoice” to highlight the costs of the Pearson Common Core field tests to the districts and students. (You can see it at this link.) Many parents refused the field testing for their children and some openly expressed their anger at Pearson and the NY Department of Education: “If Pearson wants to use my daughter to ‘field test’ during the school day,” opined Brooklyn parent Johanna Henry, “they will have to pay us... I will use the money to provide my child an enjoyable and relevant learning experience.’”
Our students will not only be denied payment for taking the PARCC field test, they will be denied valuable instruction time–time that is arguably more necessary than “helping” a testing company that could easily afford to pay children to take (and teachers to administer) this test outside of school hours. Instructional time is extremely precious, especially considering that teachers across the state estimate that 30-45 days of instruction are lost each school year due to test preparation and administration. This works out to 2-3 years of lost instruction between kindergarten and 12th grade. The PARCC field test will also create additional stress for our children, especially since the PARCC is supposed to be very different from tests our children have taken in the past. And finally, this pilot testing will increase the already ridiculous workload for our teachers and could result in pushing even more highly qualified educators out of the profession.
In addition to the educational and emotional costs of this test, TN will lose out on an untold amount of tax revenue because Pearson does not pay teachers and students to administer/take these pilot tests.
The Tennessee Department of Education has not published a list of the schools that will undergo field testing in Tennessee. Attempts to find out this information have been unsuccessful.
(This was reposted with permission from www.stoptntesting.com, a website, blog, and facebook group with a strong and rapidly growing social media presence in TN)
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