TOO MANY TESTS




I feel sorry for my students. They have been tested so much already and it’s only October. The students have taken the school diagnostic for each course, the A.C.T., a diagnostic for the district, the PSAT, and quarterly exams in about another three weeks. All of this is being done within the first ten weeks of school. When do they get a break? With so many tests, they become frustrated and do not perform their best due to fatigue and the inability and unwillingness to discern which tests are more important than others, while we, as the educators, need to emphasize the importance of them all due their impact on our evaluations.

  It’s additionally tough for the teachers because our instruction is disrupted as a result of the constant testing and we have to be sensitive of the fact that our students won’t be very willing to complete normal school work after having tested for hours at a time. It’s tough on everyone and is quite pointless to me. A test in the beginning of the year and a test at the end of the year is all that is needed to assess progress. That’s it. Let us do our jobs and let the students learn and not be disgruntled about tests.

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