Elia's Unprincipled Path

Commissioner Elia unveiled changes to the testing that students will be facing this March, April, and May. She claims that these tests will be better. I personally doubt it.

First: A new company will be handling the tests. Pearson (owned by a British Company) is , for the most part, out and a new organization, Questar Assessment, is in. Two words. Big deal. The questions are still Pearson's questions. It's just the organization responsible for administering the tests is different. The students are being tested.

Second: There will be fewer questions (with the same amount of time) so that students will have more time to answer the questions. From the viewpoint of someone that proctors these exams – this means absolutely nothing. I've watched students blow through the exam (taking them seriously) in 30 minutes. The students are still taking an exam that they either stress out over or don't care about at all. Two words: Big deal.

Third: The Commissioner wants to reduce the number of days being tested next year. If she's not reducing them to zero, then you can guess my answer to her statement.

Fourth: Teachers are supposedly collaborating with Questar to make sure the questions are correctly constructed and appropriate. No questions with multiple answers or confusing questions. Like the pineapple question. Teachers need to boycott this activity. It gives legitimacy to the tests and to testing. It will eventually comeback to bite them in 2019 when test scores become part of the teacher evaluation process again. Plain and simple – no collaboration and no testing.

The problem with testing – There is no proof that it shows what the students know or are capable of. The so called “Texas Miracle” was found to be a hoax. Students that were performing poorly on the exams were dropping out of school and pursuing GEDs (Graduate Equivalence Diplomas). These students were typically the under-performing and low achieving students. Basically the minorities and the poor. What was left behind was the higher achieving students. Any mathematician will tell you that an average will rise when lower numbers are cut out of the equation. That is what happened in Texas. The way No Child Left Behind was written, drop-outs count against the failure rate – thus the “Texas miracle” can not be repeated.

Furthermore, test results are not available until summertime – after students have either been promoted or failed, so there is no way for teachers to use the data in an effective manner .

My favorite one comes from an ELA (English Language Arts) teacher that basically taught her students how to take the test. I was told that for many questions that the students had to (literally) copy from the text word for word what was written. There was no interpretation or anything involved. Read and regurgitate. This is learning?

That is an insult and a waste of taxpayers' money and teachers and students' time.

Socialists demand an end to useless testing that turns students off from learning and turns teachers away from teaching.

That and a refund of all the money that has been wasted on all these useless tests.

We'll never get back the time or opportunity.