Wednesday, June 25, 2008
Thoughts on the CRCT test for children in school
OK call me old school but the more i sit here and think about the mandatory CRCT test for children the more it makes me sick. I have sat here for 6 grades now with my son and though out the whole school year it is a big stress factor for us both. My son has severe dyslexia so you can imagine what we go through. What happen to teaching kids? The whole school year is based on getting ready for the CRCT test and passing. Kids now a days (to me) are not being taught anything except for what the state mandates them to know for this test. The drop out rates are ridiculous because the kids that cannot pass this test do not promote to the next grade so thus doing nothing but frustrating these children. It is also sad to me the fail rate of the CRCT test for this past school year of 2008. I would love to hear some others opinions on what you think on this subject.
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6 comments:
I agree. I think, though, we should be careful not to put blame on the teachers. The way I understand it the teachers are being "graded" as well. Their class either passes the test or else. What choice do they have. The tests are a reflection on them also. I think they should get rid of it all together. It is stressful for the children and how much do these test actually measure? Some children do poorly on test and do great in the classroom. Getting rid of the tests will be less stress on the children and the teachers will not be forced to teach the tests.It is unlikely they will get rid of the test anytime soon. They have been around forever. I think when I was in school it was the IWOA test. It's all the same thing with a differest name.
I know what you mean, my daughter will be a fifth grader this year so we experienced terror with this mostly in third grade when she had to pass to go to the fourth grade. She was terrified and after helping her with some of those practice tests I could see why. And the graduation test ir ridicoulous, most kids I know are leaving regular school to go to other places where they are basically "paying for diplomas". I am on the school council at my childrens school so hopefully I will have an active role in helping to solve this problem
I graduated from high school a year+ ago, and I am so glad to get away from all the stupid state mandated tests. It's not even just CRCT, even when that's said and done with, there's going to be 8billion more tests your children are going to have to take. Even as a student I recognized how much damage this is doing. To me, It wasn't about "oh I hate test taking", because eventually I looked at it for what it was. We would learn for about half the school year, and then stop and have to recap what we supposedly learned so far to prepare for whatever test was coming, and because of that, we would never complete the cirriculum for that year, or they would cram it all in one month or so, meaning we didn't learn anything. It's asinine. We're wasting our time preparing for stupid tests, most of which aren't important and are there for the state to go "oh we suck, or oh we rule". Shouldn't we be preparing for life, and developing life skills? What happened to that? Hardly did any preparation for taking SAT's and ACT's, which affect how we continue our education, now that's a difficult test. I'm so frustrating thinking back on all of this.
I think this system is everywhere. Where I come from, we had to take a state/federal exam in elementary school before you were admitted to secondary school (this is the same as middle school and high school combined). In the middle of your secondary school, which is the first three years, you take another exam which determines if you are going into your senior years. It is really crazy but that is the way it has always been.
I agree just thinking about this i get flashbacks and get pissed lol..
You can thank former Govenor Roy Barnes for incorporating all these mandated tests. I know some have existed before, but he was more worried about where our state ranked among the others. He said all this extra learning was for the test and that he felt students were not learning or moving forward to be ready for the next level! This is so untrue because some people are not very good at standardizing testing! I have never been and when I finished my degree for college, I had a 3.7! I really blow on these types of tests(we take them all the time to get into certain college programs, it never ends), but I have the knowledge! I DO NOT believe it is a fair judgement of what we do or do not know and if they have a disability, does that make it fair for them? I think not! I think there should be periodic tests throughout the year to make sure kids are on the right track and then they can work on those issues DURING the school year. or GEE we could wait till the end and then punish them because they did not score high enough!
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