Jill Robb, Vero Beach
Letter: Constant testing is like putting children into an episode of the 'Twilight Zone'
In our country, all children have the right to a free, appropriate education. In fact, it is the law that all children attend school. Because of that, our classrooms are filled with an extraordinary spectrum of abilities. Even if we disregard learning disabilities and environmental factors, a child with a 67 IQ will progress more slowly than a child with a 140 IQ; yet, due to the No Child Left Behind Act and now Race to the Top, we continue to bombard our students with testing and expect all to progress in the same way. Then, we blame teachers when students are not reading at grade level!
This is the plan to increase student achievement? News flash — not all students are going to read on grade level and continual testing does not increase student achievement!
The FCAT exam is still here, so to prepare our students we give them benchmark tests three times during the school year. In science for example, it takes some of my special education students three days to complete a benchmark exam. Nine days of benchmark testing plus two more days for FCAT testing results in my students missing 11 days of classroom instruction — more than two weeks of class!
When will we stop pretending that this is useful? Oh, maybe spending incredible amounts of money on a teacher evaluation system and forcing teachers and administrators to endure hours and hours of training on how to perform to meet that system may do the trick! We need to speak out to our legislators and tell them to stop pretending that all this makes sense.
This episode of the "Twilight Zone" needs to end. It is time to get real and be honest when it comes to educating our children.
Monday-Friday: 6am-3pm / Saturday: 6:30am-10:30am / Sunday: 7am-11am