My Solution for Testing

I'm not sure this would work for the elementary or middle school students, but I would love to see offsite testing of high school kids.

Right now, we end up shutting down for over a week for standardized testing (TAKS tests).  We cannot teach anything those days as they are untimed tests.  Worst yet, we are mandated to watch the students.

It puts teachers in a hard spot — we are responsible for those test scores, and because of preceived cheating, we get blamed and requirements get tougher each year.  Right now, the kids are placed in room randomly and so are teachers.  Wall decorations have to be removed, we have to stare at the kids the entire time, can't use phones, etc.  It's a real hardship for me because I have medical devices that beep — we've got to record that as an exception.  And we have to take up all the kids electronics.  I get it, I don't like to be away from my cell phone either, but most teachers don't.

So here's my solution:

Online testing at a central location. 

Kids are scheduled randomly, they show up for the test and they get on with their life.  They can take the tests in any order and still take as much time as they want. 

It would work for any size district — in the smallest district where the entire district is in one building they could reserve a room with computers and network.  The largest districts like ours could have more than one center and those centers could be used for staff development or other training through out the year. 

We already have a GED testing center, so it probably won't be that hard to put up others.  I could even see them using our existing staff development labs — we have 3 in one building at the same site as the GED testing. 

By using completely different staff it would solve the preceived cheating problem.  It would also solve the problem of not having enough computers — instead of testing all the students in one week, we could do it over several.  Rescheduling would be as big an issue either.   I see it as a win-win for everyone, and takes the entire burden off the school.