Testing

April was mostly consumed with preparing for testing and taking the MCA and MAP tests. While I understand the rationale for testing kids, I'm concerned the testing is taking precedence over learning. In April alone, my students spent approximately 6 days worth of time testing. When there are only around 20 school days in the month, that's crazy! This doesn't even count the content-area tests they take for a grade (math, science, spelling, etc.). So where do we draw the line? After taking the Reading MCA's for 4 days, one of my students asked, "Do we actually get to learn next week?". Poor kid!

Third grade is the first year the students take the MCA's. That means we don't just take them, we have to teach the kids how to take them. (Rules, strategies, etc.) I truly believe that teaching to a test negatively impacts what/how students learn during the course of the year, but what do we do? We're required to take them and unfortunately, there is a lot of weight put on them. Does anyone else think there has to be a better way to prove that we're doing our jobs? Also, I often wonder how taking all of these tests benefits the students? A lot of the time I feel like they're doing all of this work and going through all of this stress and not seeing any benefits to themselves. At least with content area tests I'm getting immediate feedback on what my students know and what areas I should reteach/go more in depth into.

Does anyone know if we're going to have to take the MCA's three times next year? I heard rumors of this and I'm a little concerned about what that is going to mean for the kids.