First of all… as if.
As if some last minute review, or “covering the material” one last time (or for the first time), right before testing, does anything at all. You really think they go, “Whoa, I’m sure glad we rushed through factoring before the test
As if some sort of epic ”practice test” will do anything except get kids sick of the whole thing before it starts.
As if.. d’oh, the sink is clogged, and House is on soon. Gotta go. I’ll finish this in the next post.
But before I go, I gotta ask Heather, over in the the comments section, what the heck does SOL Test mean? I was checking out your blog page to see what your 8th graders are up to and I noticed “SOL Test.” Where I come from that has always meant, “$#!* Outta Luck. Maybe for some of them, that’s the end result.
I guess that’s what they mean by high stakes testing?
SOL = Standards of Learning. Clearly, the department of education did not think the acronym through. For high schoolers, the “real” meaning of the acronym is appropriate – they have to pass, I believe, 6 of the tests to graduate.
Totally with you on this post topic – I worry that the required practice tests scare some kids into thinking they’re going to fail the real deal before it happens and they give up. Instead of spending the next 7 class periods drilling I’m going ahead and starting an Anne Frank unit (they voted), and I’ll work the skills they need a little more practice on (describing tone, making inferences, the usual skills kids always need more practice with every single year) in as we go.
I’ll bet if you were at the high school, you’d hear kids joking about that acronym, especially AFTER scores were released. Did you just say that your practice tests are required. Ouch. Good call with the change in plan.
Required. Every department does one, usually the released test from the previous year, so by the time the school year is over the students have actually taken 8 standardized tests.
@ Heather – Ouch. ’nuff said.