City Students to Face Test After Test, Test, Test, Test

If you have kids, we sure hope they like taking tests. Not only do they face regular tests in classes, but the city is set to expand their regimen of periodic tests for the 1.1 million students in the city's public schools. The tests, which the city is paying $80 million over five years for, will be administered 5 times a year for students in the grades 3-8 and four times a year for high schoolers. Students in the 3-8th grades are only taking periodic tests 3 times a year now, while high school students don't take them at all. While the tests currently cover only math and English, they will be expanded to include science and social studies. The new system will also allow for faster feedback on student performance and for administrators to track teacher and student progress.

The periodic tests are supposed to help teachers single out which students need more help before the annual state exams, which are used to gauge a school's performance for the federal No Child Left Behind law. Naturally, there are some that worry that students will be subject to too many tests. The president of the UFT, Randi Weingarten, told The Times that teachers are already using one day a week for test prep and that "You’re spending a lot of time doing test prep and doing paperwork associated with test prep instead of teaching."

Schools Chancellor Joel Klein said, "I don't think it means more pressure. I think it means more learning." Clearly, it's been a long time since Chancellor Klein took a test! The new tests are designed to fit into a 45-minute class and will start this fall.

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By tien mao in News on May 31, 2007 4:40 PM

Comments [rss]

teach the kids

The standardized tests are part of what is wrong with the educational system.

The politicos basically mandated them so they could appear to be doing something instead of actually doing something. When they do that they make things worse.

Spoken like a shill for the teachers unions and the democratic party. The reality is that No Child Left Behind has identified failing schools. It just hasn't fixed them yet. That said, the bill is up for renewal and with luck it can be improved. But testing should remain and something should be done about teachers and administrators that only care about test scores in so much as they want to keep their jobs and pensions. I think the act clearly demonstrates that your kids' education ranks about 20th on the priorities of the unions despite their million dollar advertising campaigns.

b

and again, the uft drops the ball. this is an insult to teachers, basically calling them idiots.

if you think that a teacher who spends all day with his or her students doesn't know which ones can read and which ones can't, then you have pretty low expectations of your teachers. on the other hand, these days the teachers probably only know which students do a good job filling in bubbles with the proper type of pencil.

are there bad teachers? sure. is this going to help root them out? probably not. is it going to impair the education of a million students? definitely.

Toby

The standardized tests are part of what is wrong with the educational system.

The politicos basically mandated them so they could appear to be doing something instead of actually doing something. When they do that they make things worse.

Still Not Amused

The more the better !

Still Not Amused

The more the better !

spacedoubt

They should test the teachers.

gothamist = egumacasion

Geesh! No wonder US education has fallen behind the rest of the world. You people can continue to think tests are bad but pretty soon your kids will be the cheap labor making iPods and cellphone for China.

penny

I don't think the testing is to help the kids directly, rather it's to test the teacher's performance. If a whole class gets consistantly bad test results, then the teacher can be investigated. I think it's great!

SP

the only thing so much testing improves, especially the american style of multiple choice testing, is a child's test taking abilities,. shouldn't the focus be on learning how to think critically, develop artistic sensibilities, to be able to solve problems, understand math, etc? Kids need to read, write, and build things with their hands, not fill in circles with a pencil under a time constraint.

JFredMartin

The city has a regiment of periodic tests? Sounds awfully militaristic to me.

Either that or just plain bad English.

Tim N.

More tests, lots more tests

More tests than you have ever seen before

If you like tests, lots of test,

Then we've got tests for you!

When you've got a Department of Education that is run by a coroporate ambulance chaser rather than an educator, I suppose this is what you should expect.

Testing does not make a single kid smarter. What makes a kid smarter is the interection between him or her and their teacher. However, in a goverment run by corporate moguls (both Federal and local) it is impossible to quantify those results short-term. Hence the tests. And more tests. And more tests.

I work for a large educational publisher and this is certainly more money in the coffers, but as education policy it is sheer nonsense.