Borrrrring - thanks bureaucrats.

[DrPizza]

And here I am, first day of school for the students. And I sit here while my physics class takes a previous state final exam for physics. None of them know physics, but the brilliant minds at the state need pre-assessment scores so that they can be compared to the final exam grades to ensure that I taught them something. Well... I *could* be teaching them something at this very moment.

I am so very thankful we didn't adopt rules that make me waste even more days giving full period tests, so we can track their learning.


Was it ever like this for any of you in other states?

 

[surfsatwerk]

My wife taught for a bit and both my parents taught before they entered the brave new world of "retirement". Standardized testing is something they have little love for.

 

[child of wonder]

Our kids almost immediately take tests at the beginning of the year, too. Then again in the middle and again at the end.

 

[SunnyD]

You should be punking them. Hard.

Troll those test grades DrP! The Board of Regents will thank you for it!

 

[DrPizza]

If I could shift the entire curriculum that I teach forward one day, this would be an extra day at the end of the year to review for the state assessment. Or, more likely, this would be an extra day to apply physics in an enjoyable way - make a hovercar, physics of board breaking - whole class "karate" chops boards in half, etc.

 

[Gibsons]

And here I am, first day of school for the students. And I sit here while my physics class takes a previous state final exam for physics. None of them know physics, but the brilliant minds at the state need pre-assessment scores so that they can be compared to the final exam grades to ensure that I taught them something. Well... I *could* be teaching them something at this very moment.

I am so very thankful we didn't adopt rules that make me waste even more days giving full period tests, so we can track their learning.


Was it ever like this for any of you in other states?

There's a middle manager somewhere trying to justify his job. Just wait til he hires an assistant, and they decide that mid term assessment is needed.

 

[DrPizza]

You should be punking them. Hard.

Troll those test grades DrP! The Board of Regents will thank you for it!

Until we had to start doing this, I had never in my life given students scantron sheets. This is the first and only day of the year that I use those things. Any grades that I turn in are 100% accurate. (Presuming the scantron machine has a 0% error rate.)

 

[preslove]

Until we had to start doing this, I had never in my life given students scantron sheets. This is the first and only day of the year that I use those things. Any grades that I turn in are 100% accurate. (Presuming the scantron machine has a 0% error rate.)

Lower their grades by periodically breaking their concentration. Yell things, turn on the tv (if you have one), do a silly dance etc.

 

[Vdubchaos]

This is similar to child abuse. We have very few parents that really abuse their kids and it forces our government to apply similar rules to those that simply want to discipline.

Same for teachers, few shitty teachers that have no clue what they are doing and schools refuse to fire them, so government is force to apply BS test on ALL teachers and assuming everyone is shitty.

What a pathetic world we live in. Our justice system and education system is completely fucked.

Actually, this applies to ALL systems hehe

 

[SunnyD]

Until we had to start doing this, I had never in my life given students scantron sheets. This is the first and only day of the year that I use those things. Any grades that I turn in are 100% accurate. (Presuming the scantron machine has a 0% error rate.)

Oh oh I know... use "Outcomes based education" on them! It worked for me! (By worked I mean it caused me to fail precalc)

 

[LookBehindYou]

My son started doing it last year in third grade (and again this year in 4th). They do standardized testing for 3 days, 3 times during the year (second week of school, middle of year, end of the school year). Yay Kentucky, one of the two states that adopted that common core bs early.

 

[Juddog]

And here I am, first day of school for the students. And I sit here while my physics class takes a previous state final exam for physics. None of them know physics, but the brilliant minds at the state need pre-assessment scores so that they can be compared to the final exam grades to ensure that I taught them something. Well... I *could* be teaching them something at this very moment.

I am so very thankful we didn't adopt rules that make me waste even more days giving full period tests, so we can track their learning.

Was it ever like this for any of you in other states?

Wow that sounds ridiculous.

 

[brainhulk]

My AP teachers had us come in early and stay over after school to prepare for exams. We had a very high pass rate

 

[Exterous]

Was it ever like this for any of you in other states?

Well I am speaking for my wife but: Yes.

It could be worse - a lot of her tests were only based on district decisions and those had some serious flaws, especially considering they constituted a good chunk of your performance rating (which determined class schedule, how much your pay got cut [pay raises? What are those?] and if you got fired when they cut more teacher positions)

1) No accommodations were made for Special Needs students for the district tests. Since this had no effect on their overall grade there was some loophole they exploited to get around having to do this. Unfortunately they heavily concentrate special needs students in large co-taught classes. So my wife and her math co-taught classes were used in direct competency comparisons to her cohorts who had smaller classes with next to no special needs kids

2) No penalty for not taking the test for the kids but the teacher is given a 0 score for that student. Her school already suffers from very poor attendance so the teachers were absolutely shocked when the standardized test day had so few students it didn't end up counting as a school day. Tests were still scored though.


Fortunately she left that train wreck and is now much happier at a much better school district. The twice a year assessments do seem to be becoming more common in Michigan but the new district does not do that. There is still the MME testing, more time intensive, MDE which will require an unspecified number of 'interim' assessments though. There might be some implementation of Common Core but the legislature is still arguing over that

 

[Gunslinger08]

I don't have a big issue with this. I had to take "skills assessments" before some high school and college courses. Maybe your students will surprise you and you'll be able to skip over some early material because they already know it. Doubtful that they already know kinematics or thermodyamics, but maybe they've got the scientific method/units of measurement/etc. down pat. I think it's a good thing to be able to quantify what a student learned throughout the year. Sucks that it's taking up your class time. I wonder if your district could start school 1 or 2 days early for assessments?

Using the assessment as a gauge of your prowess as a teacher can be iffy. It needs to be done in the right way. Your students scores shouldn't be compared to others. What they should be looking for is just improvement in overall competency. As mentioned by Exterous, they also need to take into account accommodations for any labelled students and the final assessment needs to actually mean something to the student so that they are interested in doing a good job on it.

 

[linuxboy]

There's a middle manager somewhere trying to justify his job. Just wait til he hires an assistant, and they decide that mid term assessment is needed.

That is so last decade. The latest thing is continuous proactive monitoring, offered as an upsell to the standard Helicopter Parent or Big Brother packages. With proactive monitoring, testing is done in real-time using various psychometric and performance metrics to alert to early possible failure.

Coming soon, predictive analytics. Know which kids will do well and which will fail before they take any tests or learn anything.

 

[DrPizza]

Coming soon, predictive analytics. Know which kids will do well and which will fail before they take any tests or learn anything.

Well, by the middle of the 1st quarter, even I can do that; heck, I can do that already. Let's see... current valedictorian of his class... 98-100% on the final exam. 2nd in the class... 98-100% on the final exam.

 

[highland145]

Well, by the middle of the 1st quarter, even I can do that; heck, I can do that already. Let's see... current valedictorian of his class... 98-100% on the final exam. 2nd in the class... 98-100% on the final exam.

Profiling. Is that allowed?:hmm:


So if they do really bad(ly) and then are stellar at the end of the year, do you get a bonus of some sort?

Instructions:
Row 1 mark all As.
Row 2 mark all Bs.
etc.