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In August, Education Secretary Arne Duncan added to the chorus when he wrote in a blog post that “testing issues today are sucking the oxygen out of the room in a lot of schools,” and that teachers needed more time to adapt to new standards and tests.
He was right on the first part and then turned around demonstrating quite nicely how he is a big part of the problem. They don't need to adapt to new tests, we need to get rid of so much testing.
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In Florida, which tests students more frequently than most other states, many schools this year will dedicate on average 60 to 80 days out of the 180-day school year to standardized testing. In a few districts, tests were scheduled to be given every day to at least some students.
On the low end in Florida, 1/3 of the school year is dedicated to testing - that is 1 out of every 3 days, in case you missed it. When are they supposed to be learning? We are testing kids to death, sucking the life out of both students and teachers, and it's not like it has improved education.
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He was right on the first part and then turned around demonstrating quite nicely how he is a big part of the problem. They don't need to adapt to new tests, we need to get rid of so much testing.
On the low end in Florida, 1/3 of the school year is dedicated to testing - that is 1 out of every 3 days, in case you missed it. When are they supposed to be learning? We are testing kids to death, sucking the life out of both students and teachers, and it's not like it has improved education.
I agree too that these tests need to go. In Maryland when I went to school we had to take the MSA tests from 2nd to 8th grade. Then, in high school, you had to pass 4 "HSA" tests, one each for English, Algebra, Biology, and U.S. Gov't.
All the tests mentioned took place in April, and teachers would spend almost all their time devoted to those tests in the month leading up to them, and drilled important concepts that would be all over these tests throughout the year before them. Everything had to be about "the tests", and there was little room for anything else.
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