Reply to What are some ways to advocate to reduce the SOL testing?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote]PP here, you've never had an experience with a teacher who was checked out? I've had some wonderful teachers and did well in those years, standardized tests wouldn't have been an issue because I learned a lot. [b]But I also had a third grade teacher who was completely checked out, who literally let all of us do independent study all year for math and reading (here's your workbook and your reader, do as much as you'd like, let me know if you have questions) and gave me perfect grades despite the fact that I never turned in a single assigned project. I got nothing out of that year. My sister was written off year and year by teachers through elementary school due to undiagnosed learning disabilities, it wasn't until fifth grade that a teacher took and interest and realized what was really going on. She was terribly behind by that point, and since the school wasn't acknowledging it, my mother didn't realize it. And this was in a top school system. [/b]

How we use those assessments (e.g., how they relate to teacher performance standards) may need some tweaking, but I absolutely think it's in kids' best interests to have regular standardized tests to make sure children are actually learning what they need to know to progress and can't fall through the cracks due to sheer (willful?) ignorance.[/quote]

Which school district was this?

Shouldn't teacher performance be monitored by administrative observations before the end of the year testing?  It seems like it's too late to wait for test results to find out that teachers are just passing out workbooks or that kids are being "written off" year after year.

I was given books to read on my own in elementary school, but that was because I was way ahead and the teacher had to help the lower level students.  I did not actually suffer from this (at least I've done well in life despite this independent style of learning).   [/quote]

I don't want to give away too much identifying information, but it was a school system on Long Island, one of the best outside of NYC. Obviously the school should have been aware of what was going on and addressed it in both of these cases, but they didn't. And without a means to know that the good grades their children were bringing home were meaningless (because my sister was given near-top grades despite not actually learning anything), my parents weren't in a great position to realize what was going on and intervene. They knew my sister wasn't progressing as quickly as I was, but I was also labeled gifted very young and my sister wasn't, so they never expected my sister to perform where I did. Finding out at year end isn't the ideal situation, but far better at the end of the year than three years after that.

As for you doing well despite being given books to read on your own, can you really not see the difference between that situation and a teacher simply giving a math workbook and instructions to simply show her each page after we were done, with no accountability for whether we'd done anything? Seriously, I went an entire quarter at one point without showing that teacher any work of any form in any subject, still got perfect grades. Fortunately I had a fourth grade teacher (and natural aptitude) who got me straightened out, but I wouldn't assume everyone was as fortunate.[/quote]

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