This morning I tweeted in frustration about the numbers of online state standardized tests we give here in the overly-large school district.
That comes from the daily report the testing managers in IT sent us today (and every school day this time of year), along with the fact that we had completed more than 220,000 online tests so far in this testing season.
The really depressing part of those statistics is that we have “only” 180,000 students in K12 and some of them don’t take the SOLs*. Or still take paper and pencil versions of the tests.
Now just imagine all the practice and non-SOL multiple choice tests taken during the rest of the school year.
Sad.
* SOL = Standards of Learning, Virginia’s infamously named state-wide standardized tests.
When I taught 5th graders four years ago I did the math. I figured out that my students took a standardized test (either SOL or practice SOL) on 5% of our school days. That doesn’t include any test prep time (not that I did much of that). At some point it would be nice if we recognized how much more important it is to spend time learning rather than testing.
When you add the online piece it drives me nuts because it takes away all the computers for weeks. Sigh.
This makes me very, very sad! I have moved to the “other” side and am now in an independent school, but feel so much for the students and teachers who are still a part of the public system. This is NOT learning…When is this going to end?