We finished TAKS testing on Friday. It's a MAJOR deal and to do it, we have to shut the whole school down.
We had 9th graders in the portables — they only test Math on Thursday.
Special Ed and Limited English Speakers were upstairs. I don't understand their testing and don't have to deal with it.
We had 10th and 11th graders in the building proper.
During the first two days, I did my favor duty — hall monitor and better yet was a reliever, so was at a different post every 30 minutes.
I did the Science test on Thursday — which is a drag as you have to distribute calculators and clear them.
The last day was Social Studies.
And as always managed to screw something up — the seating chart. I could do it if it was on the computer.
The next joyful thing I have to do is to Field Test an EOC (End of Course) test for Chemistry and we have 300 students. Thankfully I just have to have my lab ready.
Texas really needs to change the way we test high school students. Shutting down for 4 days is ridiculous and putting it on the teachers is even worse, since we have a stake in the results. Everyone is convinced we are going to cheat and we have monitors out the kazoo.
We need to go to a testing center. Probaby have to use the local communinity colleges or build a facility just for testing. Students get an appointment and report for testing that day, instead of reporting to school. The people who work at the testing center could be in our sub pool and they wouldn't have a stake in the students doing well, so it would be more fair.
We're going to have to do to that for on-line testing. Here's the deal, with 300 students we're going to probably have to kick my kids and one other labs kids out of their room for 3 days. That part really sucks.
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