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I'm a third grade teacher in Eugene. This testing frenzy has trickled down to our third graders, and I do mean FRENZY. Not only does the state want to test our kids, the school districts have developed their own tests, the new curriculums have a multitude of their own tests. I hardly dare give students my own assessments. By November this past year, my students had spent 8 periods taking somebody else's tests . By the end of the year, these 8 year olds had spent THIRTY - 30 - days taking tests. That's one month of INSTRUCTION I lost with my students. That's a lot of time lost to test-taking.
There's a hilariously sad & funny essay that's gone around about a cow farm whose managers have been expected to raise the average weight of cows. So the farm puts the bulk of it's resources into weighing the cow. The gist is that weighing the cow frequently and rigorously does not in fact increase the weight of the cow. Our students are being tested to death; it's robbing them of the real joy of learning. Even if you give teachers more money to get the job done and even if you lower our class size numbers to something under 30 kids in a class, you still have robbed us of the time it requires to teach them the very standards you expect them to master. There are too many tests! It's taking the joy out of teaching as well as learning.... and I am a teacher whose students exceed the standards in large numbers (60% exceeded math & reading)

posted 4 years, 11 months ago
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