Thursday, May 08, 2008
State Exams
Today for the first 2 hours of school (usually periods 1,2, and 3) the time was used to give the annual New York State Science Exam. It seemed to be harder than the past 2 years, and there were quite a few "tricky" questions. The readability seemed to be quite high this year.
At this point, writing this feels very cliche, but our 8th graders in NYS are tested to death. In 5 subjects (Math, English, History, Science and Foregin Language) they take state exams that take a total of 4 hours each, 2 hours on back to back days, to administer. Students are taking over 40 hours of testing.
It is a major disruption to our schedule. I missed 3 out of 5 sections today and yesterday. On top of the math exam in march, and the english (ELA) exam in January. The exams always seem to fall in the middle of the week, which slices 2 days out of the middle of a unit breaking up any kind of day to day cohesion.
How can we expect the students to achieve at higher rates when they are taken out of the classroom? Students need more instructional time, not less.
Isn't there a better way to administer these exams?
At this point, writing this feels very cliche, but our 8th graders in NYS are tested to death. In 5 subjects (Math, English, History, Science and Foregin Language) they take state exams that take a total of 4 hours each, 2 hours on back to back days, to administer. Students are taking over 40 hours of testing.
It is a major disruption to our schedule. I missed 3 out of 5 sections today and yesterday. On top of the math exam in march, and the english (ELA) exam in January. The exams always seem to fall in the middle of the week, which slices 2 days out of the middle of a unit breaking up any kind of day to day cohesion.
How can we expect the students to achieve at higher rates when they are taken out of the classroom? Students need more instructional time, not less.
Isn't there a better way to administer these exams?
# posted by cochran86 @ 7:16 AM 
