Teachers urged an Ohio Senate committee yesterday to scale back new standardized tests, arguing that the longer exams take too much time away from instruction and are causing anxiety for students.

Teachers “are beyond frustrated with the increasing amount of time spent on testing and the way it has crowded out time needed to teach and engage students,” said Becky Higgins, president of the Ohio Education Association, the state’s largest teachers union.

“The current fixation with testing is sucking the oxygen and joy out of our education system."

Several classroom teachers told legislators that new standardized tests aligned with more-rigorous Common Core standards are of little help because the results aren’t available for months, long after school lets out for summer.

They also continue to oppose the use of test results to help evaluate teachers and grade schools on state-issued report cards.

“The purpose of tests should be to drive instruction, to meet the needs of children, not rate teachers and schools,” said Dan Greenberg, a high-school English teacher in Sylvania.

(Read more at the Dispatch)