Public School Testing

I have a good friend that is a public school teacher in my Metro Atlanta county. The other day, she told me that they currently are doing standardized testing for 42 out of 180 school days now ... 42 days! That's almost 1/4 of the the school year spent testing.

Sound crazy? Impossible? Bad information? That was my initial reaction.

They have national tests, which apparently aren't released anyway. I think that's the ITBS (Iowa Test of Basic Skills). That only take a few days apparently.

Then, the state of Georgia has the CRCT (Criterion-Referenced Competency Tests), which last a week. Apparently, the CRCT is used to judge a school's status in No Child Left Behind. Since that's so important to the administrator, because it's important to the county, because it's important to the state, because it's mandated by Washington, the schools have practice CRCT tests. This, of course, is taking up instruction time.

The CRCT is a battery of minimum competency tests that are probably unnecessary in the Atlanta suburban schools. The state of the suburban schools vs. the rest of Georgia is like night and day. The test is so below the average student here, that the county decided to implement their own tests.

These tests are called the Benchmarks. These tests are intended to guide an advanced curriculum and then test the students (and ultimately the teachers) on what they've learned. These tests aren't in lieu of normal testing that would occur, relative to normal instruction. These are on top of that. These tests are interspersed throughout the year and make up the balance of days to bring the total to 42.

On top of the 42 days, these tests are made to be so critical in importance, the teachers are basically put into the position of teaching to the test to make sure the kids maximize their test score. This is taking away from real learning. The administration puts on pep rallies to show the students how important these test are, taking up instruction time.

25% of classroom time solely devoted to testing ... and how much prepping for that?