So you don’t see anything wrong with taking the better part of a month to teach kids how to pass a test to the detriment of everything else they could be learning?? The problem is that the standardized tests are NOT ALIGNED with district curriculum. That’s the problem!!!
Teachers literally STOP teaching their regular curriculum, begin teaching the kids what is on the test and how to pass the test. Yes, I have a huge issue with that!
When I taught, it used to be a joke that our students thought American history ended with WWII because that’s as far as we ever got, year after year. Enormous amounts of history and science content, in particular, are lost when 2-3 months of a school year are spent trying to get kids to pass a test.
It’s nice to think that a standardized test given to millions of kids across the nation will be aligned with each district’s curriculum, but that isn’t even logical or reasonable. That’s why they all stop what they’re doing and focus on the test. They KNOW better.
Now, whether or not the test has value depends on the test. In Arizona we have had horrific “standardized” state tests in the past, and I’m sure our state isn’t unique.
I don’t happen to have much faith in standardized tests as an absolute measure of student learning or achievement. If a school district REALLY wanted an accurate measurement of student achievement using a standardized test, they would just announce to the kids on a Monday, “This week we’ll have two hours of tests each morning,” and see what happens.
When money and prestige are tied in with results, you can bet principals and teachers will do everything they can to get the right numbers, no matter what.
“2-3 months of a school year are spent trying to get kids to pass a test.”
Ma’am, I teach and with all due respect if they did their job the other 7-8 months they wouldn’t be spending the last 2-3 catching up.
I can see this argument wrt to the sciences, but history?! Wow. I can see devoting a week to the test prep, but beyond that?
The “regular curriculum” is, in many cases, largely BS and feel-good and self-esteem. The state tests guarantee that the pupils will learn something of what was a few generations ago called education. The real eye-opener for me was when the local district adopted Saxon Math for Elementary school then dropped it after a couple of years because the teachers felt useless because the slightly more motivated students were able to learn the subject solely from the material. The teachers felt cut out of the loop. They went back to the mystification of math that all the other, more “popular” series promote. I have looked closely at a number of Math Series. I could teach myself algebra from Saxon. I could not make anything out of the others. They multiply words and lead students up weird paths and omit information so that the duller teachers will have something to do. Thank God the politicians instituted standard tests and the teachers have to teach to them. The kids have to learn something that is real that might not contribute to the Unions’ fantasies about Self-Esteem and Environmentalism.
For a few talented, perceptive, and motivated teachers the tests can, indeed, be limiting, but for the great majority it is what allows their students to know a little of real academic subjects before they graduate.
But the real puzzler is, if people cared for their children and their futures, the kids would not be in public school at all.
The "history" taught in public schools almost everywhere is the politically correct joke. Much more time is spent teaching far less information than 30 years ago was the case and it declines from year to year. When I was in elementary school in the 50s (a ragged private Calvert System school) I learned more history, world and US, by the time I returned to the States and public school at the end of 4th grade that the schools did not catch up to me until 9th grade. AND THAT WAS MORE THAN HALF A CENTURY AGO!. It is far worse in modern classrooms. And the teachers have no notion how bad it is because their own education was mostly rapidly degrading public school and then there is Teachers' College.... I paid attention when my wife went through that at UF. In the whole time she got about two terms of good practical instruction and the rest was mostly latest fads and educationist fantasies. The only profession more addicted to Fads is Psychology.