testing, testing...

Today's schedule day was "white" and that meant the even-numbered classes were an hour long. That gave me two planning periods that were an hour long. Boy, did I get a lot done. Tomorrow is "maroon" and that means the odd-numbered classes are an hour long and I'll have a much shorter planning time.

Testing is ridiculous. I mean, I can see where it's important to know the literacy rates of my students but unless the whole school is going to be focused on content literacy there's not a whole lot to be done in one subject in isolation. It's tough enough to develop skills needed for my own content. And I actually am conscious of learning styles and have a strong focus on content literacy but even with multiple strategies it doesn't seem to help much.

Social studies and science, foreign language and health are not tested. So for the most part it seems pointless for me to analyze the statistics and try to apply them to my own content.

I get so frustrated when we aren't listened to as teachers, as professionals. There's little opportunity for teachers to measure student performance in content areas on a standardized level. We've created multiple opportunities for students to reach our local standards and school-wide standards and yet we're prevented the chance to create a real tool for measuring our student performance. bah. I mean the SAT or the PSAT? I don't think so.