More Tests, Fewer Teachers
Posted by drpezz on March 23, 2008
I sometimes feel this way about standardized testing and class sizes in my school.
The Doc Is In
“The time has come,” the Walrus said, “to speak of many things.”
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Jim Van Pelt said
You are on a roll this weekend.
We start our standardized tests this week. Not only are there four days of them, but to maintain the illusion of teaching and keeping the requisite number of student contact days, we have jammed our regular schedule into the last two hours of the day. The juniors and seniors who weren’t testing in the morning will join the sophomores at 1:00 to run through their regular schedule, but with 25 minute classes. Of course, most of the sane kids stay home, and we accomplish nothing in our classes, but it looks good on paper.
This kind of underhanded only-on-paper achievement seems to be a part of “adequate yearly progress” and NCLB. A couple of years ago, to show improvement in attendance, we changed our former policy which counted a kid absent in a class if she was more than ten minutes late, to saying that if the student showed up at all, even if it was the last 30 seconds, she was counted as attending. The next year the administration bragged how they had improved in this area.
drpezz said
Maybe I should create a post about our new measures for attendance and our new “successes.” Sounds like a universal issue.