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| courtesy of Pixabay CC0 Public Domain |
Today is the second to last Monday of this school year. Oddly enough,
there are three more Tuesdays. Next Monday is Memorial Day and there is no
school.
This week is also End-of-Grade Testing Week here in our
district. Our 3rd through 8th Graders will be taking a
series of four-hour-long tests in Reading, Math, and Science, one test each day
on Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday. The “Official” time for each test is just
over three hours. Students are given four hours to finish because field test
questions are included among the actual test questions.
This is the first year since I’ve been teaching that I’ve not
taught a subject that has an End-of-Grade Test. There is a two-hour-long
Seventh Grade Science Test on Friday, while the Fifth and Eighth Graders are
taking their Science EOG, but the results of the test do not appear on the
students’ records. The results are only used in my evaluation.
Students often get stressed during this week. I’ve been doing my
best to keep my students from getting anxious about the exams. Once upon a time
their future academic progress could hinge upon the results of the EOGs. This
is no longer the case here in our state. EOG results are no longer allowed to
be considered when making promotion/retention decisions. As with the Science
test, the results are now used in the teachers’ evaluations rather than as an
assessment of student learning.
Even this use of the End-of-Grade Test is coming to an end after
this year, sort of. The separate item on the teacher evaluation instrument for
testing is being eliminated and the evaluation items it included are allegedly
going to be spread out among the other objectives. What this effectively means
is that the EOG will become a very long and arduous test the students must endure
for no good reason other than to make the politicians and their lackeys at the
State Department of Public Instruction look like they are doing something to make a difference when the truth is it makes no real difference at all.
The earnest hope of all the teachers and local school
administrators I know is that the politicians and so called experts will
realize that the current End-of-Grade Testing system is fatally flawed, does
not accurately measure what the students have learned, and is far, far too
long. Until then…
As always, I remain
The Exhausted Educator
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