S/O - Standardized Testing - Good/Bad/Useful

[Anonymous]

How about fun? I think tests are fun.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Parents of kids with poor test scores/results will say, it doesn't tell anything and, therefore, it's useless.

Parents of kids with good test scores/results will say, it's an excellent measure of identifying gifted/talented/magnet kids.

So, the argument continues in circle.

Except that its actually mainly those whose kids should be performing well on the tests who are clamoring for its reduction.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'm a teacher and it seems like we test as much as we teach. It is excessive but some of it has its value. Testing that can give teachers instant results are actually useful and worthy of the time. Testing that takes months to score is a waste of time and effort IMO. I'm an ESOL teacher and we test our students in January/February each year. We usually get the results in mid May just in time for the end of the school year! By the time school begins in Aug/Sept, those test scores are no longer accurate. We spend a few weeks administering our tests. We do not teach during those weeks. So our students miss out on weeks of instruction for us to get our results at the end of the year.

The ACCESS test can kind of considered to be an EOY test and shouldn't be used to base current year curriculum for a student. For example students who met the exit criteria on the test are exited at the end of the school year. So it's not like if the scores came any sooner, like it's say in March or April, the student would be exited immediately after receiving the score.

Similar in some school systems the ESOL level for the student next year is determined by the previous year's ACCESS score.

Yes but a test score from January/February is often quite inaccurate by late August when putting classes together. Some kids make tons of progress after ACCESS and then go home for the summer and backslide a lot. The only real use for that score is to determine who exits ESOL at the end of the year. Our students miss WEEKS of instruction to gain this information.

[Anonymous]

Standard tests are fine. However, spending two weeks to take the test and interrupting classroom instruction for two weeks are totally unacceptable.

[Anonymous]

There is way too much testing in MCPS. Magnets should be expanded and offered to more students with entrance based on comparing the whole person as the top colleges do.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:There is way too much testing in MCPS. Magnets should be expanded and offered to more students with entrance based on comparing the whole person as the top colleges do.

Holistic admission is one of the problems with top colleges, not one of the advantages. Magnets should try to grab the smartest kids; grades and test scores are easily the best way to identify the smartest kids.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:There is way too much testing in MCPS. Magnets should be expanded and offered to more students with entrance based on comparing the whole person as the top colleges do.

Holistic admission is one of the problems with top colleges, not one of the advantages. Magnets should try to grab the smartest kids; grades and test scores are easily the best way to identify the smartest kids.

Hey, Harvard, you're doing your admissions wrong, you fools. I will tell you how you ought to do it!

[Anonymous]

The problem is that there is so much testing that teachers have a difficult time maintaining continuity with their instruction. For example, in a few weeks PARCC testing begins. In my elementary school, K - 2 teachers will be giving mClass to determine end of year reading levels and also giving MAP-P to determine where kids are with math. mClass can take a couple weeks to complete depending on class size and fluctuations with reading levels. That's a couple weeks when kids aren't meeting regularly for small group instruction. MAP-P is a computer based test that can take between 60 - 120min.
PARCC is a completely different beast. At the elementary level in grades 3 - 5 students will take 3 units of English/Language Arts (2 hours of missed instruction for each unit) and 4 units of math (roughly 1.5 hours of missed instruction per unit). Our school is testing nearly every day in the month of May and first week of June. In addition, these teachers will also be giving their poor kids MAP-R to assess reading (about 1.5 hours) and MAP-M (1.5 hours) to assess math. Oh, and these upper grade teachers will also be required to MIRL their kids during small group reading to get yet another reading level. To me, MIRL has been the best way to gauge students' reading level. Giving running records and comprehension checks on a regular basis has increased the ability of the teachers in my building to diagnose needs and prescribe strategies to meet the needs of students in their classrooms. We could all do without mClass and PARCC...just way too time consuming for the end result.