Final Day of Testing

Hooray!!!!! In a couple of short hours my WASL ordeal will be over (that's the Washington Assessment of Student Learning). This is our state's attempt to comply with No Child Left Behind. Our overly ambitious state decided that even though the Feds only require math and reading testing that we also need to do science at 5th and 8th grade and writing at 4th and 7th. These are the 7 most boring and exhausting days of my year. On Tuesday I had students spend FIVE hours writing an expository essay. Now they were the exception and most kids only needed three hours, but that's heroic work in my book for children. The untimed nature of the tests requires that we have to find places to park the kids who are finished early while maintaining a quiet testing environment for those who are still actively working. Those kids got short breaks for lunch and snacks, but they couldn't go to recess. The test security police think that 9 year olds might share ideas and help each other with the test if we let them have recess. They apparently don't know 9 year olds very well. Fourth graders have better things to talk about.

As a sixth grader Noah only had to do the reading and math tests. He's finishing up today too. Alyssa opted to take all four tests last year as a freshman, usually they're taken as a sophomore. She passed them all and so she didn't have to test this year. These exams are graduation requirements. Since she wasn't testing she had half days of school while the other sophomores and upper classmen who didn't pass last year were testing. That's just wrong that she missed 8 half days of school to accomodate testing schedules. I have a co-worker with an autistic son who was told to keep him home on testing days since he didn't have to take the tests and his teachers were needed to administer tests to other students. He missed seven days of school when he could have been working on his individualized learning goals.

I certainly hope brighter days are in the future for education with a change in Washington DC and hopefully some changes in Olympia too. Since Alyssa is planning on going into teaching I'd hate for her to feel the way I do about my job come springtime.