Hell in a handbasket...

location: Work

mood: pissed off

music: Flipping test books, Grumbling in the back of my head, Angry comments held back

Think back to high school.

Remeber how the teachers had a certain list of things they had to teach all year long.

Concentrate on the history classes.

Now, LOGICALLY, history goes in order. (duh)  US history- WWI, Roaring 20's, Depression, WWII, Cold War, 1960's, 1970's, 1980's right?

I just described my second semester class.

Somehow, in 90 days, I have to teach all those subjects.  You, as historians yourselves, know that this is a boatload of work to cover.  Ho nestly, we should START 2nd semester with WWII and then progress, but since basically have to cover all 230+ years of strictly defined US history, our year is basically broken down into about 14 units...in 9 months.

Now, I teach history, not math, but even I can do 14/9 and realize that i don't have enought DAYS to teach it to the depths that they want.

Now, I can STRICTLY teach what they want.....and fly over ANYTHING that might interest the students.  Drill and kill teaching would do just that.

The state breaks the testing down to 5 "categories"- 
Revolution to Civil War, 
Reconstruction through Progressivism, 
Imperialism and WWI, 
1920's - WWII, 
and Life after WWII.


Taken that was, and averaging 5 chapters per "category", we still have1.2 weeks per chapter to do all this work.

Hmmmm.

Maybe the test makers should TAKE math for a change.

Basicall,y the last 1/5th of the test is stuff the learn AFTER they FREAKING TAKE THE TEST.

In other words, 20% of the information that is on the test is ALREADY FAILED because they cannot POSSIBLY KNOW much about it because we have not been given the time to teach the information.

That immediatelty drops their scores.

Add in that some of the questions make NO SENSE in terms of their asking.  I remeber one that asked what South Carolina's primary crop was before the Civil War (This was an example question from 6 years ago!).

Options:
a)Indigo
b)Rice
c)Cotton
d) Olives.


Now, knowing the Civil war's main crop disputes were over cotton, and Britain took over India to fuel it's cotton deprivations during the CW, LOGICALLY, we'de pick C.


*buzzer*  WRONG.  Correct answer is B, Rice, in the swampy delta lands.


WFT



I HATE,    HATE....HATE state standardized testing with an unyeileding, inveiled PASSION.



One last part to this.

Anyone know what a "Norm Referenced Test is?

Basically, 50% of the students score on each end of the bell curve....and the bell adjusts depending on who scores where.

Meaning, that 50% of the testing body will ALWAYS FAIL EVERY TEST.

Bush LIKES these tests.

The alternative is Criterion Tests, where they have to get a certain NUMBER of Questions right.  Much better choice.