Unit tests. Written by a now-bankrupt East Coast consulting firm. I’ve written a bit of this previously, but I am trying to put that last year in perspective now, for myself and for its victims — my students.

These mandatory tests were expected to be given to all seventh grade students at the same time, whether they were in special education, bilingual classes or regular classes. Academic coaches graded the multiple choice portions. I got to grade the short answers. I was never able to give a single student full points on any of these questions. I rarely managed to give a “+1” partial credit. To my knowledge, no student of mine ever passed a unit test. Bilingual students all went down in flames on these tests. So did special education students. So did a significant number of regular education students. A number of regular education students passed these tests, but that did not help my students.

Every Friday we had to give quizzes designed to get students ready for unit tests. Special education and bilingual education sometimes fudged and moved the test to Monday or Tuesday, but we were all supposed to be in lockstep. We had to be doing the same thing because the whole course of the year had been preplanned. The quizzes were put together by the math team but they did not help me with my problem. The quizzes were adapted from future unit tests. Both of my classes had come into the year at a 3rd level according to MAP; The fact of being years behind those unit tests was also complicated by inability on the part of some students to read the test.

The wackiest part came when the special education teacher and I created extra tests and quizzes to add to the weekly quizzes, occasional unit tests, three MAP tests, three AIMSWEB tests, and PARCC test. We had to create those extra quizzes since we were required to base 100% of students’ grades on tests and quizzes. A 2% override was allowed; if students got to 78% we could bump them to a “B” for example. But our students only chance of passing required the creation of these extra tests and quizzes we could use to improve their overall average, since they were almost always failing their Common-Core based tests and quizzes. Students could also retake quizzes, although not unit tests. I can’t count how many retakes and even retakes of retakes I gave. I gave many of them on Saturday mornings at special emergency tutoring sessions at McDonalds.

Should my students have been able to do the math in the tests above? Yes, they ought to have been ready for that math. But they were far from ready and I knew that from week one. I knew that from benchmark tests at the beginning of the year. I’d been in this situation for years and I’d been action-researching solutions for years. I’d found that remediation had to accompany attempts to master the current curriculum. Starting with necessary remediation put us too far behind; there were too many holes to fill in and we arrived at grade level much too late.

But those unit tests were the perfect example of “You can’t get there from here.”

Those particular mountains were too high for those students who could not add double-digit numbers. They were too high for students who could not add fractions. They were too high for students who did not understand percentages. Now, I could have taught my students to answer the above questions. But I could not do it in less than four days. The timetable was killing us. Fridays were shot due to quiz review and quizzes. Mondays might involve quiz review, although some days the time situation became so desperate we blasted through that review. We even missed reviews. I agree with a professional development speaker I once had: Shame on teachers who do not go over test and quiz results. That review tends to be one of our best teaching opportunities. But the train kept moving and some days I’d realize that I only had two and one-half classes to teach something like two-step equations, and I’d lose at least half a class if I reviewed Friday’s quiz. In desperation, I’d jettison the review.

I was required to split my class into groups daily to do group work. That sucked up extra time. Groups are fine but groups cost time, too, even after kids learn to manage the routine. I was supposed to be teaching vocabulary, too; I’d be a ridiculous bilingual teacher if I did not. Time slipped away.

I could have showed my students how to answer that pizza probability problem. I did show them. But they did not get the practice and repetition they needed to understand the pizza problem. And the quiz was on Friday and I was stuck. I could hold out until Monday for that quiz if I thought one or two more days might actually help, but every time I held out, I fell further behind, as regular classes marched forward at the pace I was supposed to be setting.

Eduhonesty:

My strongest students learned a great deal of math. I’d call that an argument for math placement based on previously identified math skills, though, not any endorsement of the Common Core-based, top-down curriculum approach that led to the above tests. Those tests are ludicrous. Every single one of those unit tests was ludicrous.

At the start of the year, I predicted my highest students would benefit, some kids in the middle might benefit and the kids at the bottom would be clobbered. I came close to calling the race, too. A few kids at the top made notable progress, more than they would have made with a less demanding curriculum. (I do want to try to be fair and objective about the testing regime.) As measured by quizzes and unit tests, a few kids in the middle who came for Saturday tutoring regularly also made progress. But those kids at the bottom crashed and burned. Students in the middle who did not get additional tutoring — some kids could not stay and did not have transportation, some kids would not stay — also went down in flames. Every week we were supposed to show color-coded quiz results for team review. Most of the time, only quiz retakes kept my spreadsheet from being a red sea of failures.

Tomorrow, I’ll try to post a few more tests, and add more to my story.