Coming Up on Testing Season
From a friend's Facebook page:
Parents, educators: Please read and share:
"I am a third grade teacher. Today I had to give the interim SBA ELA performance task.
I couldn't believe how hard the test was. I was a fourth-grade teacher for many years and this seemed equally as difficult as the fourth grade test. The directions were confusing, very long, and the tasks expected of the kids demanded organizing and processing parts and pieces in their head.
Another third grade teacher typed a part of the directions into two readability programs. The directions came out between 6.9 and 8.4 GLE readability.
😣" - Anonymous Third Grade Teacher
Parents, educators: Please read and share:
"I am a third grade teacher. Today I had to give the interim SBA ELA performance task.
I couldn't believe how hard the test was. I was a fourth-grade teacher for many years and this seemed equally as difficult as the fourth grade test. The directions were confusing, very long, and the tasks expected of the kids demanded organizing and processing parts and pieces in their head.
Another third grade teacher typed a part of the directions into two readability programs. The directions came out between 6.9 and 8.4 GLE readability.
😣" - Anonymous Third Grade Teacher
Comments
It's not just the SBAC. Some things are targeted way too high and some way too low these days. It makes you scratch your head.
Many early learning experts believe that the Common Core tests are developmentally inappropriate for grades 1-3.
Comparing a college test experience to 3rd grade doesn't even make sense. College is supposed to be hard. It's how students find what they are good at. 3rd grade is about helping students become prepared to be good at something, someday.
Let's rethink
I love the argument about developmental appropriateness being based on "I've heard some people say..." Where have we heard that before? I'll not leave you in suspense --- it's POTUS. It's his favorite phrase to use when there's no empirical evidence for his claims.
Po3, SBAC is a 501c3 non-profit organization --- it's prohibited from making campaign contributions, besides the fact that it makes no profits. Sorry to break your false (but favorite) narrative. This information has been shared with you many, many times. And since you continue to make these false statements, let's just assume it's willful and, therefore, lies. A favorite activity of the aforementioned person.
Is anyone else seeing the similarities between the opt-outers/anti-vaxxers and POTUS?
Albert
Opting out is resistance to this idiocy. But only works if a critical mass refuses to take the tests.
Outer
Myself, I think opting out because you have issues with the whole testing system is the best reason. If parents in our state flexed their muscle more on this, you might quite surprised how things would change.
The evidence of experts, not "someone told me", about the developmental inappropriateness of the SBAC is out there for all to read. It's not anything made-up.
Equating opting out with Trump and anti-vaxxers is bizarre but there you are.
"Po3, SBAC is a 501c3 non-profit organization --- it's prohibited from making campaign contributions, besides the fact that it makes no profits. Sorry to break your false (but favorite) narrative. This information has been shared with you many, many times. And since you continue to make these false statements, let's just assume it's willful and, therefore, lies. A favorite activity of the aforementioned person."
Please refrain from attributing comments I didn't make to me.
Thank you.
I believe in getting kids used to testing--it's a great skill. And I agree about TestingAdvocate's comments on norms. However, I would much rather school time be spent on something that gets kids excited about education and their future.
I volunteer and I'm shocked at how regimented the curriculum is. Very few outside experts are pulled in to talk about their subjects and give kids hands-on experience. The little hands-on they get seems to come from crummy pre-purchased science kit (aka edu-industry money-makers). Imagine if those 3 wks of test prep was instead devoted to experts talking about their jobs and giving kids hands-on experience that inspires them. Kids need inspiration and reasons to achieve. If we want kids to think outside of the box, we need to stop giving them work that only encourages box-thinking. I'd like to see a district-wide opt-out.
I apologize for the error.
Albert
I actually support the Common Core. I think the standards are solid. But what some people don't realize is that it is up to each principal/teacher to decide how to apply the standards and check for them. We could be working toward the Common Core standards in SO MANY WAYS, but when the SBAC becomes the main focus of how to measure achievement of these standards, then everything that is taught and tested in the classroom starts to look an awful like the SBAC. That's why the kids end up with extremely regimented writing assignments that literally ask for a certain number of sentences containing evidence, followed by a specific number of sentences containing reasoning, etc. Our kids are going to leave for college with an incredibly mind-numbing, lock-step approach to writing analytically. So yeah, I have a problem with this test and how it is being administered and handled in our district.
It is great to have strong analytical writing be a goal for all students, and to work toward it even in the middle grades, but to expect kids in middle school to deftly craft and support a claim using textual evidence and their own reasoning on a single test without support or revision is truly a bridge too far.
Let's rethink
And I would agree with you wholeheartedly that parents should opt their children out of testing if they think it's what's best for them. But opting out to #Resist and/or advocate for changes in the education system is a political statement. Get ready to take what comes with politics.
Albert
To say SBAC is a cover for Amplify is, well, a conspiracy theory. But I'm sure you have a graph with circles and arrows...
Albert
If the test directions are way beyond the reading level of the students taking the test, the results are not likely to provide a realistic picture of what students know or not. If the instructions are so complicated that they lose students, the results won't be valid. They won't provide a good measure of whether students meet standard or not.
And the point of these tests is not to identify the small percentage of children who are highly academically gifted, nor are they intended to "weed out" students who aren't high performing, like is often the case with college courses.
DisAPPointed
I'm surprised but I guess some people are new here; I've been involved in the politics of education for a long time and nothing scares me.
If a reasonably smart adult can't decipher what the test is asking/what the testers want, it seems patently ridiculous to expect that from third graders.
Folks here should try the SBAC practice tests to see for themselves.
NW mom
We're in the 3rd week of the second semester. How can these tests give any kind of realistic window into what kids have learned over the course of the year when they have over a third of the year of instruction left when they take the assessments? (and the part of the year with the fewest breaks and longest uninterrupted instructional time) How can we compare scores of kids taking a test in early March with those taking it in late May? Are we so cynical no one believes an extra 2.5 months of instruction matter?
Not a problem for kids in HCC it seems because they're tested on content they were taught 2 years earlier. Once they enter middle school, only 1 year of testing (8th grade, not 6th, 7th or 10th) even reflects content they were taught at the school for which the scores are recorded.
testy testee
Get organized
I just point this out because although I agree with the foolishness of many of these tests, my daughter is now extremely pissed that she may have to retake the math test that she already passed. Any enlightenment would be appreciated.
-OptOutRisk
http://www.k12.wa.us/assessment/StateTesting/
We will, of course, check all this out with her counselor but I wonder if anyone else has these concerns for high school students - or am I late to the party somehow?
-OptOutRisk
Several of us brought the issue up during various opt-out discussions. Opting out is fine for most students, but certain students may need the tests for various reasons.
Here's an old thread that talks about this issue. I'm sorry you missed it at the time. The district didn't do a good job of communicating this info, and the blogs can't reach everyone...
HF
-OptOutRisk
Take Washington's Paramount Duty --- they say they're a grassroots assembly of parents, but they are clearly a political group. They endorse candidates --- although they say they don't, they are partisan --- even though they say they aren't, and they're funded by labor unions --- although they won't release their funders' list. They think they're above it all but they're rolling around in it just like every other lobbying group. In other words, they're not just a bunch of parents advocating for their kids. They're lobbying to change public policy to move the education system as well as our state's tax system and they're using political tactics just like the WEA, LEV, et al. That's not grassroots.
Albert
As to grassroots organizations, pretty much every education advocacy group in the state is funded by billionaires and megacorporations with the express purpose of keeping their taxes low and selling off schools so that said billionaires and megacorporations can make more money. If there are some advocacy groups that get funded by parents and teachers, more power to them - maybe it can help balance things out.
George
Anyone for a second?
-StandUpAgainstDrivel
And you are totally off-base with your allegations about Washington's Paramount Duty (and you can't even prove some of them so they are just speculation on your part).
But we WILL be ending this type of discussion on this thread because this thread is about testing and opting out and you lead the discussion off-topic. Mind the gap and please don't do it again.
Also, I do not allow links to entities that print falsehoods and make threats.