From Harford Students Count on Us:
The 2016-17 HCPS calendar is pictured above. All the yellow days are potential testing days. Does that seem like a lot of testing to you? 104 out of 180 school days are potential assessment days in HCPS.
Harford County students are among the most over-tested students in Maryland.
The average Maryland student takes more than 200 mandated standardized tests during their K-12 career, leading to a dramatic loss of instruction time and narrowing of curriculum.
The time to reduce over-testing is now. Please urge your legislators to support critical steps to scaling back the over-emphasis on testing including:
– Setting a cap of 2% for how much instructional time can be devoted to mandated standardized testing.
– Creating transparency in testing through regular reporting to parents about mandated standardized tests in each school district.
– Ensuring that the PARCC test cannot be used in teacher and principal evaluations, which only encourages heightened focus and pressure on standardized testing performance.
– Reducing the months-long disruption caused by the Kindergarten Readiness Assessment by changing it to a sampling test rather than a test given to every student.
– Applying to the federal government to seek innovation in testing so districts can experiment with performance-based assessments rather than PARCC.
Click here to email your legislators now!
Our mailing address is:
Harford Students Count on Us
Harford County, MD
Bel Air, Md 21019
Silly Ryan Burbey again.
Class of 99 and spend K-12 in Harford county. I don’t remember that many standardized tests and I don’t remember ever being taught to a test. The most we ever prepped for a standardized test was a quick explination of how to fill in bubbles properly.
That was almost two decades of educational reform that you have missed from 2 of the worst presidents in history. Count yourself lucky. You are practically a dinosaur. Were you living like Tom Hanks and only talking to Wilson?
“Taught to the test” is just a euphemism for the teachers actually having to stick to a mandated curriculum to ensure the students know the material the government thinks appropriate for that grade level. When I abide by the laws, codes, regulations, and customer expectations applicable to my work, it’s doing my job and a good thing, but when public servants are expected to do the same, it’s the worst idea ever and outside a teacher’s scope of work if HCEA is to be believed.
Proper lesson planning and classroom management wouldn’t have the teacher spending two weeks before the test giving out the answers, the students would already know the answers. You won’t see me pull out the spec sheet two weeks before a proposal is due and change everything to suit the customer’s requirements, I include compliance from the beginning.
If a teacher can’t effectively instruct students on the subject matter for their classroom their employer has decided he/she will teach, why are we wasting tax dollars on his/her salary?
I don’t think the issue here is that most teachers are against testing. After all, it is just one of the many tools used to see if a student grasps the material being taught.
The issue at hand is at how many tests a student has to take.now, in this era, than they used to 10-15 years ago, when the biggest exams you had to worry about were the HSA’s.
When a teacher doesn’t receive scores back for a few months to see where their students did well or did poorly, so that they can redo lesson plans and perhaps reteach the areas where students are lacking, it becomes an issue.
When the testing company monitors social media to see if students talk about the exam after they have taken it, it becomes an issue. Who hasn’t talked with their peers about a test after an exam?
When the same testing company also is pushing textbooks, ebooks, and other materials to help students get a higher grade on these tests, it becomes an issue.
When you are also told by your administration to ‘not schedule any major exams or projects due on major state-administered days,’ it becomes an issue.
When test scores in subject matter you don’t even teach in are used to judge you as a teacher, it becomes an issue.
When students are missing class time devoted to one class so that they can have this mandated testing for another class, it becomes an issue. When are they going to make up that missed instructional time?
Why is it when a few people voice a concern, they are immediately shot down by others in this community? Why can there not be an honest discussion about ‘is this too much testing?’
Are you kidding me? You must be a newbie to this board. Kharn is so old school that he used a piece of chalk to write on his slate tablet, walked 10 miles in 3 feet of snow to the one room schoolhouse even when he was sick and was never late a day. If you are a real teacher, you are probably the only one on this board. We do have a few self identified “teachers” as you can see.
Who says that the content on these standardized tests are also covered in the state mandated curriculums??? Are you stupid? People making comments on stuff they don’t know on the dagger…nooooooo really????
From what I can tell Harford Students Count On Us so far want an extended Thanksgiving break, reduced testing, reduced teacher evaluations, longer lunch breaks…sounds like a bunch of adults that want more time off and zero accountability.
Well said.
Money Tree,
It has been quite awhile since I have made a substantive appearance on this board. Anyone of consequence is aware of my reputation and views. I see that you still have a “passion” for teachers that I once shared. Over the years, I know that many on this board and in Harford County took great pride in demeaning public education and to some degree teachers for a wide variety of foolishly perceived or politically expedient “offenses”. All we managed to accomplish with our collective efforts was to help transform Harford County in to a smaller version of Kansas. My own ego and blind political ideology caused me to take part in conversations and actions that I now in retrospect would find lacking in merit. I would suggest that your passion for the environment is improperly paired with your educational fervor- much like pairing chocolate cake with champagne. Maybe some reflection would be helpful. I am and will always be the Lagmeister, and I still find entertaining sport in eviscerating the foolish no matter their choice of occupation. However, I am really trying to make modifcations although nice will never happen.
That mailing address seems kind of suspect…
I am an HCPS teacher and am disgusted by this group. Perhaps they have good intentions but need to hire a PR firm because who ever is putting this out makes teachers seem greedy and lazy. These clowns do not represent me.
I completely agree. I am part of the HCEA and am totaly embarrassed by them every day. I know my fellow teachers in my school talk every day about quitting the HCEA and their extremely liberal biased crap. We are tired of the Hogan bashing as well. I think this will be the last year for many of us as we are completely fed up. When the HCEA comes to our school during our lunch time and sits in our faculty room, many of us eat in our classrooms that day. We don’t want to be bothered. It’s such a shame.
Stop crying, man-up or woman-up and quit unless your like 90%+ of the people who post on here and just make $#!t up. I have no skin in the game and couldn’t care less, but I am tired of the excuses. Quit wasting your time posting and use your time for resigning.
I hear North Carolina is hiring. I believe that is a right to work state. You should go right down there and work. They tell me you can start at about 20K give or take and no unions to bother you. Sounds like a solution to me.
45,000 and have chairs thrown at you or $20,000 and have most people treat you with respect.
Tough call.
You sound like one of those liberal Common Core PARCC supporters to me.
It just goes to show how powerful the Unions are…..
What are you drinking? We wiped unions out in the south and part of the west. When we get done in Maryland, teachers and labor will be lucky to make $15 an hour. More profit as the cost of labor goes down. If the Republicans can’t get it done, we will create a new Conservative party that will.
And everyone is just clamoring to move to Alabama…..The land where a family reunion is viewed as a dating opportunity.
Bawahahahahaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Who is “Harford Students Count on Us!” and if they are the Teachers Union why not say so. I get some of there argument, but the unnamed author needs to tell me at least this: Where is 21019? According to the USPS is does not exist. Why hide in the darkness if you have the truth?
Any topic can come up, and the teacher-bashers come out of the woodwork. You won’t fine many among those who have tried it.
Let me tell you about standardized tests. Kids figure out in no time, that those tests don’t count towards anything of their concern. Once one of them asks what happens if they do poorly, their effort goes out the window. Eventually, they learn there is nothing in it for them to try hard and do well. It’s not like their SAT’s of other college entrance exams. These tests are meaningless to them. Whoever thinks a school or its staff by should be judged by tests that have no importance to the kids who take them is missing the most important part of the test itself….the kids’ efforts.