Life in Hell -- The World of 52 new Standardized Tests in Charlotte Mecklenburg Schools

One Teacher's View

"Here's the teacher's report, edited slightly for length and clarity:

*Tests did not arrive at school until Friday, April 1. School administration did not have time to train test administrators enough to feel confident about giving the test.

*Special area classes (music, art, PE, etc) and ESL classes are cancelled this week so that those teachers may assist with testing. This is to ensure that classroom instruction can continue. However, students will miss those special area classes. Most teachers at my school have some planning time during the special area class time. They will not have planning time this week.

*I have 50 kindergarten students to test this week. That is about 20-30 minutes per test, times 50 students. It's mentally exhausting for me. I am wondering how much time the final summative tests will be. We have to administer those next month. We are looking forward to having to cancel instruction for a week then as well. 10 days of instruction lost, out of 180 instructional days. That's a lot.

*The second-grade test has been taking more than 50 minutes. 50 minutes is supposed to be the upper limit of the test. This is only for one portion of the test (like, just math, or just social studies).

*I could write about 5 pages about how poorly constructed the test itself was but I'm not sure how much that would fall into breaking test security. I can say anecdotally that I have administered many different types of tests and this is about the worst test I have ever seen, as a "standardized" test. I don't know how much CMS spent just getting this field test version, but it appears to have been a complete waste of money, at the same time we are decreasing services and planning to lay off hundreds of teachers. The wording of the questions, the graphics that go along with the questions, the instructions for assessing the student's answers... It's not good. That is worrisome since these will (perhaps) eventually be used for Pay for Performance. How can we respect a PfP model if it is built on faulty testing data?

*I am giving the kindergarten science test. It is 34 pages long, so 17 sheets of paper. That times an average of 25 students per kindergarten class at my school. If each K-2 test is about that long: There are 21 K-2 classes in my school. So, 17 sheets of paper x 25 students x 21 classes x the number of elementary schools in CMS. That's a lot of paper. We usually have to ration paper to make copies at school. We would love to have that amount of paper to use to support instruction

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Read more: http://obsyourschools.blogspot.com/2011/04/cms-test-week-one-teachers-view.html#ixzz1KTBaXBR7