It's sad that it has taken another chaotic incident, such as last week's calendar mess, to realize that standardized, high-stakes tests are still driving our schools.
The proverbial question seems to abound lately...what to do with our children after these high-stakes tests have concluded.
School board member Dr. Nancy Routh ponders, in a N&R article over the weekend:
“We make such a big deal out of testing that we act as if anything that comes after testing is of no use,” she said.
When she was a teacher, Routh used those days after exams to go more in-depth with subjects that are important but maybe didn’t carry as much weight on the exam.
...which begs the question...is anything being taught these days that doesn't have a standardized test attached to it? Or am I the only one that has a problem with this?
Obviously not, according to your letters to the editor in the N&R:
I applaud the school board’s decision to stand up to the Department of Public Instruction regarding the proposed makeup days in June. However, a couple of things in the March 11 article bother me.
School board members “argued that if having makeup days is truly about making up lost education, then the makeup days should occur before end-of-course exams.” From this, can I assume that any school days beyond the end-of-grade testing are of no educational value? It would seem so. (Or is that yes, it really is all about the tests?) Second, dear school board, please do not seek to start earlier in the year. Since when are the days of June any more sacred that the sweltering days of August?
Denise B. Young
Browns Summit***************************
mamaboilermaker said:Since the sole purpose of school is for kids to pass EOGs and make administrators look good why not immediately double promote/graduate all students who score 80% or above? Get them out faster, reduce overcrowding, preserve resources for those kids who still can't read or do arithmetic? If, indeed, nothing else matters but EOGs, that would be a logical course of action.
Frankly, the brightest students would probably be better off heading to college early and not wasting any more time on state tests.
Oops! I forgot. You need those bright students to stay in high school, bored out of their minds, in order to pull up the average scores for each school. If you allow them to escape and get a real education, that will leave only the struggling students and the taxpayers might find out that a frightening number of them have not experienced success in the government-controlled system.
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School attendance after the EOGs does indeed seem to be the crux of the issue, which points to exactly how much these standardized tests have become the point of attending school at all. Get the kids to pass the tests, receive funding, rinse, repeat. Our neighbors' kids tell us every spring that once the EOG tests are finished, all they do in school is play games and, if they raised enough through the various candy sales, have all-school carnivals. Funding education with our tax dollars hardly seems like a good investment anymore.
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