Education Association of Charles County (EACC) Members ring in the New Year with yet another round of testing for our students.  The first and second week back to school after the winter holiday is filled with assessments that our children must endure.  

These assessments are not state mandated.  They are Charles County Public Schools testing that takes away valuable teaching time – not to mention the time it takes to score and record this data.

Three weeks in March are also filled with testing, the first two weeks for “mock high school assessments”, followed by another week of 3rd quarter assessments for all students.

The entire school year is filled with testing not mandated by the state.  I don’t even want to estimate how much time teachers spend getting ready for “the test”, giving “the test”, grading “the test” and finally hearing about county results of “the test”.

When are we really going to see how much our children learn by giving our teachers time to evaluate their students on an individual basis, on the content that should be taught in our classrooms?

Even the state testing falls short of truly assessing our children appropriately!  Its “one-size-fits-all” test cannot reflect the individual’s ability to learn and make progress.  It remains because our State Board of Education feels that we cannot waiver from a Federal Law (No Child Left Behind) without negatively affecting funding to Public Education.  

How sad it is that we subject our students to undue stress and anxiety around all of this testing.

Our high schools students have to pass the “core” subject tests to get a Maryland High School Diploma.  It doesn’t matter that they may have passed the required classes, but if they don’t pass “the test” they get a Maryland Certificate of Attendance – no diploma!

So what do we do?  We remediate and remediate and remediate those that failed “the test” – instead of giving our students classes like Physical Education, the Arts, foreign languages, and a vast variety of classes that are both useful and interesting.  

Our special needs students are also subjected to the same tests.  Their teachers spend substantially more time preparing for minor modifications allowable under the law which really don’t help many students succeed.  This paperwork and the time spent would be better used tailoring instruction that provides education of value – not just prepping for a test.

The Charles County Board of Education should take a long look at our testing schedule.  Question the validity of the tests and the time they take to administer versus the time our teachers spend teaching.  Maybe our children would actually do better on a semi-annual test that assesses what they have learned.  

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The statements above were delivered on behalf of the EACC’s approximately 1,900 members to the Board of Education at their Jan. 8 meeting by Joe McMahan, EACC Executive Board member and 1st grade teacher at Dr. Brown Elementary. 

McMahan’s concern with the amount of assessment tests the school system requires is its effect on the quality of teacher/student interaction.  He feels the instructional relationship between student and teacher suffers because so much of the teacher’s time is spent satisfying the requirements of testing. 

“When you add another test, the care and love for the kids gets dropped,” he said. 

“Teachers feel like the test becomes the instruction,” added Meg MacDonald local representative of the MD State Teachers Association.  “Some children simply don’t test well.  And with these assessments, teachers feel these children get left behind.”

Board of Education members Pamela Pedersen and Maura Cook voiced the concerns for standardized testing that they expressed during their campaigns in 2006. 

“I recognize that we have a process that does have some benefit,” said Pedersen, “but I’d like to reduce local testing without doing away with it all together.  I think there is a compromise in there somewhere.“

Pedersen and Cook encouraged the Board to look at the testing issue at a future meeting; but, no definitive plans were made.

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