The first week of 2016 New York State ELA testing is complete. The stories of the test takers and those who administer the exams are trickling in via various social media sites, pages and posts. The comments below were posted publicly across many different social sites without names because teachers are under a gag order to not speak about the exams. Fight Club like restrictions. Read it and weep while keeping these words in mind as we prepare for the next round of 2016 NYS testing: Math.
Here we go…
“That several English Language Learner students in a district with intense pressure to test well due to Receivership status sat for 6 hours of testing today. When the tests were taken away from them at dismissal they were still working. These are children. How can anyone support this?”
“I just proctored the 3 grade test in NYC. The first question from the passage about the ” sniff” was impossible to answer. It made no sense. I asked four other teachers and they all had no clue. Many of the questions were tricky and I believe there was no correct answer!!!!! Nothing has changed. Thank god my 3 grader doesn’t sit through this torture. Some kids still testing from 9 am.”
“Here we are again. Another year and the same mess. Attaching book from third grade test. The excerpt is a guided reading level U. Absolutely NOT a grade 3 level.”
[Note: The attachment was missing from the post.]
“In 6th grade there was a poem from the 17th century that the teachers in our building read in COLLEGE. 11th grade level.”
“The 7th grade ELA had a passage that required the students to “read/view” a picture of a tiny ear implant placed inside the ears of guinea pigs. They had to explain in a short response question how the picture contributed to their understanding of the article. The image was ridiculously small and difficult to look at because it was so small…not bigger than 2 inches. It was terrible. Not to mention the unlabeled planning pages for the essay, which are not used for grading, but if the kids needed more room, they could go onto the pages that were supposed to be used for planning. It was a mess.”
“Today’s 4th grade passages is the same thing. I found “The Kite Fighters” by Linda Sue Park – grade equivalent 6.3″
“On the 4th grade test today there were intentionally misleading questions. One involved a quote about ‘a light over your head’ and the answers for what that means included ‘having a good idea’ and something about understanding what’s going on. Either of those could be true. Really difficult especially for my ESL kids who don’t have that colloquial language. Don’t forget that one of the readings involved Mesopotamia. A 6th grade subject.”
“4th grade extended response question was inaccurate. Asked how the character’s feelings toward SHEEP changed in the story. Was supposed to ask how their feelings about sheep HERDING changed. Character’s feeling about sheep was that they smelled badly, that feeling NEVER changed. Feelings about the job of sheep herding changed though, which were excited, nervous, etc. Tests were much harder, longer, and not even close to developmentally appropriate. People still making alot of money off them though! Poor kids”
“6th graders struggled with book 2 and 3. Some worked for almost 3 hours. :(”
“4th grade short response did ask how the the map contribute to the understanding of the content. I had several kids ask me what that meant, and of course I couldn’t help them. I also had the resource room teacher tell me that my ESL student she was working with struggled with that same question. There was also the word “ewe” in one of the passages. Another ESL student raised his hand to ask me what a E – WE was. 4th grade – 3 blank pages in back of book after the word STOP. During middle of test had to interrupt kids to tell them to use the blank pages for planning. 3rd and 5th no blank pages.”
“Five of my fourth grade students spent three hours on book 2… They missed snack and their special… I feel so bad for these young children.”
“Form F 4th grade had that jack border collie passage too. Story told from Jack’s perspective. Jack is a dog but it was hard to figure out. Very challenging, confusing story for a 4th grader. It was an excerpt from Sheep by Valerie Hobbs and you had to read the 1-2 sentence summary at the beginning to figure out who the characters were. If you didn’t know what a border collie was, you would not know that the story was told from a dog’s point of view. The summary did not explicitly state that, you had to figure it out. And the text was confusing. Lots of inferencing required. Again, it’s just an excerpt, decontextualized. The word haughty was used in the passage. And students had to write about how Jack’s feelings about the sheep changed. When did the feelings change and why. Also very detailed about herding sheep. Used a lot of vocabulary about sheep herding. Kids not familiar with that at all.”
“3rd grade test: I saw that there was an excerpt from a biography of Neil deGrasse Tyson, which was written at a Lexile Level of 780 – definitely above the 3rd grade reading level. In my opinion, that Lexile level sits at a sweet spot between 5th and 6th grade.”
“One question on the 6th grade ELA asks students to read through 60 lines of text to tell which of the chosen 60 lines help you understand the difference between evening and night. Talk about obscure! The written examples aren’t even in the answer choices. They have to look between lines x through x for 4 different choices.”
“Changes to the test???? Two of the passages on today’s 6th grade test were used on last year’s 6th grade test.”
“I’m in a middle school. The kids work till they finish and then are allowed to eat. 9 am to 1 pm for those using extra time. Lunch periods end before that. Not hot lunch for them. Just sandwiches. And no bathroom breaks when they move to the next room to finish.”
“3rd grader threw up at start. Went home, is opting out of rest of tests.”
“Some classes had students still taking the test until 12:30. Kids way late to lunch. Starting time 9:00.”
“6th Grade reading selections were An excerpt from Kathleen the Celtic Knot, A Famous Secret Valley ( Jerry Miller) an excerpt from The Heart of A Samurai ( Margi Presus ?) a poem titled Twilgiht & Calm ( Christine Rossetti) and an article Getting Lost in a Good Book Can Keep You Healthy. Authors not 100% sure if last name is correct. Still need to search them up for lexile levels.”
“Daughter in 5th grade reported that test had a passage and questions that were identical to a passage from last year’s test that her school used as a test prep question (Yasmeen’s Turn). A friend in 6th grade reported the same issue.”
“Tweet NYSED and demand they invalidate the 3rd & 5th grade tests because no planning pages for extended responses are provided.”
“Millions of dollars spent on these tests and they still mess up the directions. We just got an amendment from NYSED fixing their directions…unbelievable. I even questioned it with my class, because it’s something I taught them but wasn’t included in their booklet, even though the directions said it was”
“The 6th grade ELA test was ridiculous. The vocabulary was way above the grade level by at least 2-3 years. Just cruel.”
“We had students testing for almost the whole school day. One of my own 6th graders worked for 4 hours. These tests are ridiculous.”
“A 6th grader told me he/she was still testing into lunch period because so many of the questions had two similar answers and he/she spent a lot of time agonizing over which answer to choose.”
“There are children in the [school name removed] middle school who spent FOUR HOURS TAKING THE TEST. Omg. Those poor kids.”
“A reading passage on todays 4th grade ELA is from “The Kite Fighters”. Grade level equivalent…6.3!! Guided reading level, W!!!Talk about abusive and unfair to test any 4th grade student on this level, let alone Spec Ed and ELL learners. Deplorable. Just absolutely deplorable.”
“Day 2 6th grade…same thing. No planning page. Test started at 8:10 and BOCES called at 9:30 to tell our building there was no planning page. Our admin got on the PA at 8:15 and told the kids there was no planning page for 6th graders, they should use the front cover…hardly any room for anything…ridiculous. About 6 blank pages at the back. Why couldn’t someone freaking proofread a copy of this exam before it prints. REALLY???? Also…in the teacher instruction manual…it says to bubble clearly and if you make a mistake to erase. The scan trons and directions we have tell kids not to erase but to X out and re-bubble. Seriously? Get your shit together people.”
“I just found out from someone that the fourth grade test yesterday had a passage The Kite Fighters by Linda Sue Park. I looked it up and that has a 6th grade reading level!”
“I teach a special population. I teach mostly ELLS. In April and May, I will be pulled out for over TWELVE school days of instruction to administer NY State Exams (6 Days), The NYSESLAT Speaking Test (3 Days), NYSESLAT Listening, Reading, and Writing (3 Days). After one year in the US, these students survive the shell-shock of a new culture, language, school, etc. only to be battered by testing. It’s appalling!”
“Reading selections included: an article titled The Silver Dream Machine by Jan Greenburg and Sandra Gordon. It had a couple ambiguous questions and I had to flip back and forth to review the test to answer what I thought was the “best” answer. Also was an excerpt from “Stranger From the Tonto” by Zane Grey, written in 1956. Cannot verify a lexile level other than AD or “Adult Directed” Had to look up what a crag was afterwards. Vocab words provided were burro, labyrinth, verdure, perturbation and austerity. One question asked was poorly placed as the lines that were baing asked about fell on pages you had to flip to look at. Lastly was Winter Hibiscus by Minfong Ho. Found it on a Maryland website used as a 12th grade resource in 2008. Students had to make connections of symbolism for different characters in the excerpt.”
“One 3rd grader had to sit in the library until 3 pm because he had not completed the writen responses. He was given a lunch break.”
“My 8th grader confirmed that there were no planning pages. She said that the directions said you couldn’t use loose leaf paper so she just didn’t plan. Again the children suffer because of incompetence.”
“I had a child work until 2:30 today!! She ended up missing a math lesson on a new concept that will surely be on next weeks math test!”
“For anyone who thinks this wasn’t a big deal, one of my students left out the entire extended response essay because he thought “that was the planning page that wasn’t going to be graded”. The tests should be thrown out.”
“I would like to add that I am a special education co-teacher for grades 1 and 2. Year after year I am pulled from my teaching assignment to administer these tests. My at risk students need daily instruction. They miss out on 6 days of instruction because I am pulled. There is a substitute crisis across the nation, so no subs are available even if my school would get one for me. I just don’t get to teach and my younger kids suffer.”
“My students noticed at 8:50 am that 7th grade Book 2 had no planning page. Administrators were told. Nothing was done for over an hour. Meanwhile, students eat breakfast between 7-8 am. Some are working till 1 pm or later on the exam. Lunch is over. Not hot food for them (and we are a title 1 school) and no break. Eat and go to class. The students said the proctors were complaining they were hungry and wanted lunch. Really? What about the kids?”
“I administered the 4th grade ELA today. It SUCKED. The last passage was a first person point of view of a sheep dog. They barely explained that in the little explanation above the text, I had to go back myself to confirm that. I tested a small group of children with disabilities. 1 boy from a self contained setting refused to answer the 2 short responses. He was unproductive for 30 minutes I instructed him to skip them and read the last passage and do the extended response. He did and then he sat there playing with his pencils, the gum in his mouth and he drooled on his paper and smeared it all over the test booklet. I asked a hall monitor what to do, she spoke to him. He was still unproductive, I told him, just write anything. He didn’t. He asked if he was allowed to quit. They sent an administrator up to talk to him, she told him to write anything. He played with his pencils, gum and drool some more. They came to get him for lunch which lasted 45 minutes. He is now sitting in a speech classroom, him and a proctor with that stupid, illogical test still in front of him. He is cognitively impaired, but not alternately assessed because his mom won’t let him be and he has been sitting with a test he cannot finish for 2 hours and 45 minutes. I’m sick.”
“For the last two days, I’ve proctored the 3rd grade ELA Assessment with a young Autistic girl. She has moderate speech/language delays and moderate to severe behavior issues. She is a perfectionist who fears failure. Her testing accommodations require a one-on-one testing environment (a speech teacher was present as well), and for the instructions to be read to her. On the first day of testing, she read the stories out loud and had difficulty combining words into meaningful sentences. Her self-stimulating behaviors (rocking/hand gestures) increased and it was clear that her frustration level was escalating. As always, strategies were implemented to help prevent disruptive behavior When faced with answering the multiple choice questions, she repeatedly said, ‘I don’t know”. She had an all-out meltdown. It lasted approximately 15 minutes with her kicking, screaming and hitting the desk. Once she de-escalated, she had a water break and resumed testing… for the next 2 1/2 hours! There were minor tantrums in between with many requests for water/bathroom breaks. On the second day of testing, she sat for 1 hour and 45 minutes. She read the stories out loud (again combing words into meaningless sentences). Her written response answers were, “IDK”… literally!! My stomach and heart ached for her. My answer of, ‘you’re doing a great job, just do your best’ was not the best I could do! That is why I will continue to fight alongside all of the courageous parents for our children… ALL of our children!”
“An ESL student who was only in this country a short time, but started school in September, took this ELA test. She took this test because she and her family trust her new government. This child doesn’t speak or read English yet, but the state wants to test her “reading comprehension” skills. This test was given to her in English (because the state demanded this), her teacher was not allowed to look at what she was writing, and she had unlimited time to finish this day’s test. This test could have been in mandarin for her, it would have made no difference. This sweet child sat there from early morning until the very end of the school day, almost six hours with only a break for lunch, diligently writing her answers to her test. When the teacher finally had to collect her test, she realized that this student copied every single word of the test booklet for her answers because that’s the only way she could answer the questions. This teacher was heartbroken. This test for this child became a language test, not a reading skills test. Had the state truly wanted to test her comprehension then they would have allowed this test to be in her native language. This was not the intention the state had for giving this test. Not only will this child feel like a failure, but soon, her zero will count toward 50% of her teacher’s evaluation. That is the state’s purpose of this test.”
“This afternoon I saw one of my former students still working on her ELA test at 2:45 pm. Her face was pained and she looked exhausted. She had worked on her test until dismissal for the first two days of testing as well. 18 hours. She’s 9.” (Read the full story here)
[Note: The comments above were discovered in public social sites as of April 8, 2016 and are unedited. The solution to all of this is simple: Stop it. Fix it. Scrap it. That’s the wise words of one brave superintendent, Dr. Rella. NY refuses to stop all of it while they are trying to fix it. Madness. They don’t even have enough statistical data to make ANY wise decisions now. But, they will still try to use this testing data to punish.]
Related links:
Errors, opt-outs again cast shadow over state exams (here)
More than half of eligible LI students opt out of Common Core test (here)
Thousands Refuse Common Core Testing, Calls for National Opt-Out and Washington March (here)
Please post your comments & observations about the ELA exams here! (here)
ELA exam 2nd day: major snafu – what should now happen? Leave your comments below! (here)
3rd day of ELA testing; please add yr comments! And “impossibly improbable” reading passage found! (here)
Long Island Optout Facebook Group (here)
