I revisited Will Richardson's blog today, and once again I was pleasantly surprised to gain some interesting insights and perspective. I more specifically was encouraged about his post on the California Govenor vetoing the California state bill asking for more standardized testing in California schools.
Most recently in one of my grade level meetings, there was a heated discussion with our administration about why we had not yet started our reading groups. Mind you, we had been teaching literacy every day and the students had had ample time to read through out the day, they had yet to be divided up in to leveled reading groups.
This obviously upset the administration, however, to us, there was nothing we could do. Why? Standardized tests. Because of our frustration we calculated how much time we had spent during the first eight weeks of school on standardized tests. At our school this only includes AIMS and Gates. I know at other schools, there is much more to be done. We found that we had spent twenty school days, (the hours calculated to 20 school days) giving those tests and scoring them.
Thus, when I read Will Richard's blog post I was in complete understanding with his frusteration and also the frusteration wtih the California governor.
I think this can all be summed up with Albert Einstein's quote that Jerry Brown retold to the world, "Not everything that counts can be counted and not everything that can be counted, counts." Amen is right.
That's a really interesting connection between Will Richardson's post and your own experience as a teacher - about time there was some push-back on the extensive amount of time and effort schools are spending on testing! Thanks for sharing.
ReplyDelete