Tip #7 for newbies, and others whose districts’ testing regimes are spinning out of control: Work on cultivating resilience in your students. Work relentlessly on resilience. In particular, make sure students understand that despite the crazy amount of time their classroom may be spending on testing, test scores remain only a very small part of who they are and what they may have to contribute to their world.

Eduhonesty: Phenomena that cannot be precisely quantified may nonetheless dramatically affect human lives. We cannot accurately measure post-traumatic stress disorder, but we acknowledge this disorder exists. We cannot measure the stress created by intensive testing, especially inappropriate, intensive testing, but we know this stress exists. When the girl in the front row breaks down crying during the test, and wails to her teacher, “I can’t understand this!” that stress cloaks the classroom, and may set off other tears elsewhere.

Do we know how our students are feeling as a result of our recent barrage of testing? Do we know how appropriate the new PARCC test’s content is for the majority of our students? Given the extraordinarily high failure rate on PARCC, that question should be asked and answered. That question ought to have been answered before so many students were required to take the test.

Are our students benefiting from all this testing, and if so how? How much testing actually results in useful, new results? Who else benefits from testing? The people who sell the test are certainly benefiting. New Jersey estimates that the cost of implementing the new PARCC standardized tests in New Jersey public schools might cost more than $100,000,000 dollars after four years. The state spent around $22,000,000 in 2015.^[1] And that $22,000,000 only bought one of multiple tests students are taking today.

[1] Kelly Heyboer, NJ Advance Media for NJ.com, The Star-Leupdated March 22, 2015 at 11:37 AM.