A teacher’s troubling account of giving a 106-question standardized test to 11 year olds

All of that test-taking robs students of real learning time. This teacher reports that her students lost four class periods alone taking the GRADE. Even worse, her students are about to take another round of tests, the CDT’s, which are given on computers. Because the school’s classes are too large to fit in the computer lab, and there are so many classes that need to schedule testing, the lab won’t be available for anything other than testing for quite some time. She explains, “My Social Studies students need that lab to do the research that is a part of our curriculum and can’t be locked out during this period.” She also worries about “giving this test to three of my classes, losing yet more instructional time for yet another non-curriculum-based test.” —Washington Post.