Here Comes the Pressure!

Well folks...it's about that time once again in the school year when teachers and students are busy getting prepared for the mandatory stress inducing, and I believe largely pointless, end of grade testing. Teachers are scrambling to review key concepts they know will be on the test. Students are beginning to wonder if they have what it takes to pass the test, and if their teachers have prepared them properly. For some students the stress they deal with in the weeks leading up to the test is overwhelming. Why are our students put through this pointless stress and worry? I have still not figured it out. Politicians tell us that it is to keep track of the quality of teachers. Gimme a break! All that mandatory end of grade testing has produced are teachers that ONLY teach the very limited amount of content knowledge that they know will be on the test. Most of this teaching occurs at the end of the year right before the test, so how are we assessing the quality of the teachers throughout the earlier part of the school year?

Last year about three weeks before the end of grade tests were scheduled to begin I received a phone call from a concerned parent asking if I could please speak to her daughter in an attempt to alleviate her daughter's increasing anxiety about the test. When I asked the mother what the problem was, she replied that her daughter was so terrified of the test that she had been waking up every morning and throwing up. I just don't see the point of our students having to go through that type of stress, particularly at the middle school and elementary level.

Teachers ability to teach is something that should be left to the principal to decide, not one test on one day that determines the teachers and students worth. When I was in middle school you either passed or failed your grade. If a student failed one of the core subjects they had to go to a 2 month summer school. If the student failed two subjects they simply had to repeat the grade. This seemed like a much better system to me.

Quality teaching in today's world involves so much more than what can be assessed on one test at the end of the school year. There has to be a better way.