Thursday 6 March 2014

What could be worse than giving students a standardized reading test?

So, my second graders have to take the Discovery test in reading and math by Discovery Education.  Then at the end of the year I get to be evaluated based in part on how they do on this test.  This is the first year we have given it to our students, so I am still learning the ropes of the complex system that goes with it.  I'm so passionate about teaching reading, I hate to see how a standardized test can drill and kill the joy and wonder we can get from the reading process.  Yeah, yeah.  I know.  It's a means to an end.  The kids need the experience, yadda, yadda, yadda.  You can only guess how much this reading test grates my nerves.  But what could be worse than giving the standardized test to gauge student success in reading?  How about assigning the wrong test and then finding out later!!! That's right.  I gave them the wrong test.  I subjected my kiddos to the stress and (practice) of an hours worth of reading passages and answering questions, and it was the WRONG ONE!  So now I have to go and do it all over again.

I just hope they don't blow it off just to spite me.

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