Speak Out: Quarterly Assessments
This is the time when you, the classroom teacher are beginning to give quarterly assessment(s) in your classroom.
As you follow the pacing guide(s) for your subject area(s), are the quarterly assessments helping you to diagnose areas of low student achievement in a timely fashion and giving you the resources and opportunities to go back and re-teach the material to your students?
Speak out below—make sure you’re registered!
October 31st, 2007 at 2:20 pm
The idea is good, but it’s just one more thing to get done. I’m already behind– this is one more thing that will slow me down on the curriculum guides. It takes too long to get results, and don’t get me started on grading.
October 31st, 2007 at 7:44 pm
Timely? Today is Wednesday and I just received the assessment for one of my classes. For another class, I was handed the wrong test. Students do not have enough time to complete the test in one class period. Those students with IEP’s have several tests to take and must miss class time so that the IEP can be honored allowing for extended test time.
I can see that the tests to help teachers know what to expect for their students when the high stakes tests come in the spring.
It is frustrating for students to be tested on material they have yet to be taught.
Currently, we plan tests so that students are not unindated with multiple tests on one day. They get exhausted and cannot do as well as possible.
October 31st, 2007 at 7:52 pm
I see little connection between these tests and the curriculum guide we follow. There are no questions about what we’ve been reading or writing this nine weeks. How can we prepare for this kind of test? As I see it, it’s just another OGT practice test. Didn’t we just do this? Didn’t I just lose an entire week in September giving my ninth graders the reading and writing practice tests - which cover material they haven’t yet learned? Why are we losing more instructional days over something that isn’t helping us or the students? I think the analogy of weighing a pig repeatedly to make it fatter might apply here…
October 31st, 2007 at 7:56 pm
This one came in via email:
“Pacing guides this first quarter have been helpful in teaching and getting the lesson across to students. However, I noticed students not taking the quartely assessment seriously and making remarks such as: ‘this doesn’t count’.”
November 1st, 2007 at 5:27 am
The fifth grade reading test had a major error, a passage about baseball that was completely confusing and did not cover the materials we were directed to teach. In the old CBE format, students had an A test and a B test for individual units. These truly guided instruction. We knew what we were expected to teach and that material was tested. We could also use those tests as part of our grading. The system is spending an incredible amount of money on these tests, which provide little guidance to my instruction. The tests take far too much instructional time.
November 1st, 2007 at 7:33 am
My subject does not have assessments in the curriculum guide (pacing guide), so no, it doesn’t help. The quarterly grades are a good idea. Interims may be a bit much, but overall it’s always good for students to know where they stand at all times.
November 1st, 2007 at 9:51 am
After teaching a unit on the moundbuilders of Ohio, my students were faced with the dilemma that answers, B,C, and D were correct on the 4th grade SS test Question #2. If we are going to give these tests, I think the test makers should check to see if the answers are correct.
There were also incorrect answers on the other tests in many of the other grades.
November 2nd, 2007 at 6:40 pm
The 8th grade test was perfectly aligned to the first quarter GLI’s more than previous tests and does mimic the OAT. Concerns and frustrations: One period of English per day=3 days of test; grading takes another 2 days, results are somewhat timely, but, that’s right- we are on to a new set of GLI’s! I have never seen a chance to reteach and reassess once we get scores. Why not use them as practice OAT tests and forget those lame city-wide ones.
November 4th, 2007 at 8:27 am
These tests were a foolish waste of district money and instructional time for these three reasons. 1. Instructional Pace could not be maintained: we lost two weeks of instruction to administer the OAT practice and the Quarterly tests and days/weeks of slow down when the classroom temperature was close to 100 degrees. 2. Student Attitude toward testing: after taking the OAT Practice over the entire 5th grade curriculum in the same month as quarterly tests, and being told try your best even though you haven’t been taught this yet, students don’t have the right attitude about test taking. We see this in teacher made tests too. They don’t take it seriously. 3. Instructional materials: because of our move to a swing space, we did not have all of the materials we needed for instruction in a timely fashion. Our plans were ready. We could not find and/or did not have the supplies we knew our school had in the past.
November 5th, 2007 at 6:20 pm
Quarterly assessments, although good in theory, were too long, too soon after OAT practice tests, and took too much time away from instruction. Students wanted immediate feedback but time did not allow for that. Every moment of the entire week was spent on giving the tests and I did not have time to review/reteach concepts I know the students had difficulty with. My class of third, fourth and fifth graders had 1 reading OAT test, 1 writing simulation, 9 various practice OAT tests, and 9 various quarterly assessments so far this year. Since I need to give accommodations, instruction stopped for 14 testing / make-up testing days. The students are so overwhelmed and over-tested they are now asking if “this test matters” and if “this is a real test”. OAT practice testing takes effort away from quarterly assessments and the data we depend on for enhancing learning, as well as time for instruction.
November 6th, 2007 at 12:27 am
The quarterly assessments are a good idea, but they are not being supported enough to make them truly useful yet. I have had trouble getting answer documents with my tests or that match the test I am giving. I have had to fill in student ID numbers for entire class sets on two separate occassions already this year. There is no way to get the results back in time to reteach before the next quarters’ pacing guide starts. And I feel that the many hours (5 plus this grading period) spent grading an assessment that I may never see the results of is not the best use of my time.
November 10th, 2007 at 3:52 am
Let’s see…this year in 3rd grade we give, just for reading, Dibels (4 a year, individual assessment for fluency), Dominies (3 times a year, another individual assessments for reading comprehension), practice OAT and quarterly assessments…hum and when do we teach the brick thick curriculum in 5 subject areas? At what point did we become test giver and gave up teaching? I sign up to teach many years ago…now I test with no time to even sit down and analyze the data… Also I never understood why we needed to test all the kids…some read fine even above grade level… Why do we need to measure their fluency if they are fluent? Can those kids be exempted for some of the test? That would help a lot the kids and the teacher…And we may keep some good kids in CCS!
November 10th, 2007 at 6:10 pm
The quarterly assessments may be good, but the students are being tested too much. My kids are already shutting down when they hear “test”. What are they going to be like when the OAT comes around? I guess I’ll be teaching test taking in March rather than curriculum. That is sure a waste of quality instruction time.
November 11th, 2007 at 3:14 pm
First, what is the actual purpose of the quarterly assessment? Is to make sure that our students are learning or that our teachers on track with the pacing guide? A pacing guide that does not allow time to give the quarterly assessments. I am one of many teahcers who hold a master’s degree, I am also one of many working on a doctorate, why do I need another department that is totally detached from my classroom to tell me whether my students are learning? Second, how many dollars are being spent on quarterly assessments, and for a department the size of a high school staff? Dollars that could be better spent returning high schools to an 8 period day. With the many other assessments that our students are expected to take, when do they actually have time to learn? What research exists that proves this is the best approach to learning? Or for that matter, the best approach for assessing our students’ true knowledge. What happened to alternative ways to assess and multiple intelligence? Were all those workshops a waste of time and money? Are all of those experts wrong? All roads point to the fact that quarterly assessments are exactly what we are not supposed to be doing with our children.
November 12th, 2007 at 2:10 pm
Jgrace–
If we got rid of those positions at the end of the year, those people would have to go back into the classrooms (because they’re TOSAs) and that probably means that classroom teachers would be laid off to place those folks. I don’t think getting rid of the assessment and testing folks’ positions would save enough money to solve the problem of the 8 period day. Remember, it’s not just the high schools that are on a shortened day– the elementaries and middle schools are running shortened schedules too.
You’ve got a point on the multiple intelligence thing, though it’s our job to teach ‘em (and assess them) that way. We’ve got to face facts– the OGT is a standardized test. You have to bubble in the answers and write a few things to pass– you can’t dance, paint, sing or communicate your way to a passing grade on it.