One test down, many still to come

They Call Me Teacher, new to New York but not to teaching, writes that her fifth graders took the New York State Social Studies Test yesterday, and she is already starting to feel testing fatigue:

I heard many kids sharing their thoughts that it was a practice test (not surprised… I mean, we do about 10,000 of them.) We kindly reminded them that no, it was indeed the real deal. One more day tomorrow. Then we have forever to wait to see how they actually did. I’d like to think that we then have forever to go until our next test, but unfortunately, Math Predictive is coming up soon. This City loves tests. We test and test and test. And when we aren’t testing, we teach tests. I want to be a teacher, teaching more than just tests (I guess I’ll have to sneak it in when no one’s looking). This isn’t what I signed up for. My students will be able to take a test (maybe), but there’s a good chance, they’ll hardly be able to read a newspaper.

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