To say the parent who sent us this Dublin City Schools testing schedule was concerned is an understatement. One quick look and you can understand why. Over 170 different testing regimines are outlined in this schedule. There's barely a month in the calaendar when some kind of testing is not happening somewhere in the distrcit. Much of it is state mandated, even for pre-schoolers and kindergarten students.
You can see from the list (pre and post growth measuring) that much of the tesitng is for the purposes of generating value-add data, so teachers can be ranked and sorted.
Back in June, out-going NEA President Dennis Van Roekel said, “The testing fixation has reached the point of insanity.Whatever valuable information testing mandates provided have been completely overshadowed by the enormous collateral damage inflicted on too many students. Our schools have been reduced to mere test prep factories and we are too-often ignoring student learning and opportunity in America.”
New NEA President Lily Eskelsen García, went further
All of this testing means our students have less time to learn—and we are stealing it from them for these tests. A recent survey found that students are spending as much as 30 percent of their class time preparing for and taking these unaligned tests. We are stealing so much learning time from our kids, their parents are going to have to start asking, “What were you tested on in school today?” instead of, “What did you learn in school today?” Our students are so busy taking tests that they don’t have time to learn the material we are testing them on!
As educators, we know that this amount of testing—and the serious consequences attached to these tests—is toxic for our students. As they enter the adult world, our students will need to have good writing and math skills, creative problem-solving skills, and critical thinking skills. But I doubt they will spend up to 30 percent of their time filling in bubbles on a toxic test.
Here's the list of toxic testing students at Dublin will be asked to particpate in this coming school year