Public Schools Teaching to Test?

[warriormom]

I have my own views and objections about this. I went to a classroom where the test criteria was on the board in my son's potential ps. Why do you think teachers "teaching to test" is so detrimental?

[swimmermom3]

This is our fourth year of home schooling one or more of our children. I have also had one or more child in the public or private school system for 13 years. I have spent more hours than I care to count volunteering in classrooms and working with teachers. I have seen first hand "teaching to the test" and I have heard teachers' frustrations with regards to the situation. My kids have brought home worksheets a week prior to the exam that cover material not yet taught in class in hopes that some of it will stick for the test.

 

How effective do I think teaching to the test is? Let me put it this way. My youngest came home after third grade. I continue to have him take the state test each year. I spend not one extra minute on teaching for that test and he continues to excel on them. In fact, his scores are higher than they were when he was in school. Teach the child at or above grade level and barring learning challenges, they should have no trouble with the test. The time spent "teaching to the test" robs the child of a genuine education.

 

Please don't ever ask me what I think about the hundreds of hours spent teaching for SAT and ACT tests.

[deeinfl]

 

Please don't ever ask me what I think about the hundreds of hours spent teaching for SAT and ACT tests.

 

Please tell me about what you think about the hundreds of hours spent teaching for SAT and ACT tests. :D

 

Dee

[swimmermom3]

Please tell me about what you think about the hundreds of hours spent teaching for SAT and ACT tests. :D

 

Dee

 

Do you think I sound a bit rabid?:blushing: I will even admit to darn-near hyperventilating when I heard Jessie Wise say in her lecture that Susan and her brother started preparing for the SAT an hour a day for the two years leading up to the test. So I am thinking about an hour a day for say 140 days out of each school year. If you work an eight hour day, that is seven straight forty hour weeks devoted to learning how to test. It is not about mastering new material but about devoting 1/9th of your educational time over two years to testing. Now I know how critical those tests are in getting into the "right school," but gosh, there just has to be a better way. Testing is the snowball that has become an avalanche that threatens to bury the American education system.

[Chelli]

I used to be a ps teacher, and I think that "teaching to the test" is one of the top three reasons the ps system is not working well. This issue is actually one of the main reasons I decided to homeschool my children.

I have watched "teaching to the test" take any joy or excitement about learning that children naturally have and suck it dry. Children hate school and generally do not retain anything that they have learned the year before.

 

I remember when I was in 3rd grade (not super long ago since I'm 32 :001_smile:) that our class studied Germany for an entire 9 weeks. We learned German songs, poetry, customs, ate German food, and at the end of the 9 weeks the entire 3rd grade put on a program for the parents about each country we had studied (all of the other 3rd grade classrooms had studied different countries). To this day, I remember one of the German songs we learned in that class!!! Would a unit study like this happen in today's ps? Absolutely 100% NO!!! There is not time anymore to do fun, educational things like this. Field trips (forget them until the test is over in the spring), recess (cut some of them or all of them out), p.e. (not necessary), art or music (they can choose that for elective in high school).

 

The sad thing is that by the time my students got to my 8th grade classroom, their composition was AWFUL (they didn't even know how to write a paragraph about a topic), their reading level was well below average, and they couldn't even do basic addition, subtraction, multiplication, or division. While this wasn't true for all of them, I would say that 90% fell into this category and that includes the advanced students.

 

I did not want my children to be one of this number, so I quit teaching and decided to homeschool before my oldest went to Kindergarten. Do some of my teacher friends think I'm crazy (including my parents)? Yes. Does my daughter still complain somedays about having to do school? Yes. Did we get to spend a whole hour recently making snowflakes out of scrapbook paper just because we felt like it since we were studying precipitation? Yes. Did we reinact Galileo's gravity experiment off the tower of Pisa using our dining room chair since it fit into history and science? Yes.

 

These last two reasons are why I homeschool. Because that would NEVER have happened in ps and hearing her say, "Mom, that was really fun. Can we do it again?" means that she is learning to love learning and that is what I want for my children!

 

Sorry if I got a little revved up about this topic. Just one of my favorite soapboxes :D

[stripe]

Please don't ever ask me what I think about the hundreds of hours spent teaching for SAT and ACT tests.

No kidding. I took a state test for a teacher's certificate and I was the only one not cramming before the test began. I couldn't begin to fathom a) what they were cramming and b) why? It seemed to mostly be vocabulary and assorted geometrical terms. These were all college grads; I didn't understand what new things needed to be shoved in the brain. Or why they weren't firmly grasped already.

 

I'd like people to know words because they read them and can use them. I am not anti-test, but I hate that whole test prep industry. It made my mother very irritated when I was in high school. Isn't the point that your education is sufficient?

 

I had a short term teaching gig in a kindergarten. The principal decided we would have to administer a state standardized test. I had to teach them how to bubble in answers, and the very concept of indicating their answers. I had to take time away from real stuff to teach them the concept of taking a test, like, go to the bathroom beforehand, don't look, fill in the circle, don't talk, and so on. I found it really depressing. This was a private school.

Edited February 4, 2011 by stripe

[Irishmommy]

Are you sure the items on the board were the test critera or an objective based on the curriculum or the school district guidelines? When I taught in ps, I always had to have an objective on the board for the lessons for the day, but they didn't necessarily correspond to the test, but more likely the district guidelines. Now, the guidelines were set with the test in mind, I am sure. But what our school district did was to come up with their picture of what a graduate should know and worked their way down. I never felt like I taught to the test, but I was always one to be a head nodder. I would smile and nod in the meetings and then go in my classroom and teach the way I knew worked. Sometimes it was the way they wanted me to do it and sometimes I would do the lessons the way I wanted. My students never felt like all we covered was the test, but I think maybe it happens more in the elementary grades than high school.