Atlanta teacher Clara Totenberg Green isn’t a fan of Georgia’s high-stakes tests.
In a column for The Atlanta Journal-Constitution's Get Schooled blog, Green takes on the state's Milestones tests, the newest iteration of mandatory standardized testing in schools statewide.
Green, a teacher at the Kindezi charter school, says the test results come too late:
“The results were released seven months after the students took the test, and more than four months into the current school year. In other words, the state of Georgia took seven months to grade the test that I was given eight months to prepare students for.”
The results’ timing this year was by design, Georgia Department of Education spokesman Matt Cardoza says.
“Any time there is a new test you have to go through standard-setting, and in order to have teachers involved in the process, there had to be a delay this first year. And that’s why the student consequences as well as the teacher evaluation system were hold harmless,” Cardoza writes.
In the future, schools can expect a 2-week turnaround from the time the testing company receives completed tests from schools to when schools receive results, Cardoza says.
Still, Green says, the score reports teachers get are "vague and inadequate:"
“The Milestones results list students’ ‘domain mastery’ of [broad] themes. But within history alone, sixth-grade teachers teach 20 standardized subject areas. Just one of these standard areas covers the Russian Revolution, the Treaty of Versailles, worldwide depression, and the rise of Nazism. There are 19 other detailed and lengthy subject areas just in the history section. That means that when I’m told how a student fared on history, I’m actually being told very little.”
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