All High Stakes Test Prep All The Time

This is the natural consequence of an education policy that promotes testing as the way to measure student, teacher AND school performance as well as how to both pay teachers and assess their job security:

The pressure's on city students Tuesday as they begin taking a round of high-stakes standardized tests.

Children in third grade through eighth grade have been practicing for weeks - sometimes months - for the state reading and math exams in a bid to boost scores that plunged last year.

"There's extra pressure this year on the teachers and on the students because the teachers feel it," said parent activist Erica Perez, whose children attend Junior High School 302 and Public School 345 in East New York, Brooklyn.

"They're pushing the children, but not in the way that's conducive for their learning."

JHS 302 was on the list of schools facing closure this year after only 21% of the students passed last year's state reading exam and 28% passed in math. Perez's sixth-grade daughter, Evangelina, 11, began three days of after-school test prep in the fall.

Children who flunk the tests can be held back, but kids aren't the only ones whose futures are riding on the exams.

Schools that don't show improvement on the tests could be shut, and teacher tenure decisions are now directly linked to student performance on the exams.

Last year, pass rates on the reading exam dropped to 42% from 69% the previous year and to 54% from 82% in math.

The city has already decided to close a record 27 schools this year because of poor performance.

It may also soon release teacher ratings based on student test performance to the public.

Many students took test prep packets home over the spring break.

At Harlem Success Academy IV, students came to school during the vacation for test prep, teachers said.

PS 151 in Woodside, Queens, has devoted three periods a day to test prep since March.

Third-grade teacher Sam Coleman said his Brooklyn elementary school has been spending 2-1/2 hours a day prepping since March.

"We do a lot of great stuff during most of the year, but we hit this season and we end up putting that all aside," Coleman said. "You can make it not a total waste [of] time, but it's still not good teaching."

What does the DOE say about all this test prep?

Why, that schools shouldn't be doing it!

Education Department officials said test prep was not their priority.

"Many schools choose to complement instruction with periodic assessments, but this is not mandatory," said spokesman Matthew Mittenthal

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Sure, the periodic assessment aren't mandatory. But if you DON'T do them so that students are completely familiar with the tests and they bag on the real ones, well, then the teachers are out of a job, the kids are getting held back and the school is going to be closed.

So the "periodic assessments" really ARE mandatory.

And how are parents feeling about this?

Students are graded on a scale of 1 to 4, with Levels 1 and 2 failing and Levels 3 and 4 passing. Results are expected in the summer.

Some parents welcomed the extra prep. Cristina Plaza, whose son Isaiah is in fifth grade at PS 145 in Bushwick, Brooklyn, said she was grateful the school paid for a tutor who has come to their home twice a week since October.

"I like it because it helps him a lot," said Plaza.

But Sonya Hampton said the stress on her daughter Jerica, who is in seventh grade at PS 149 in Harlem, had "taken the joy out of learning."

"Learning shouldn't be like that rigorous job that you hate going to," said Hampton. "They're test-prepping us to death, but we don't have a choice."

Oh, we DO have a choice - the choice is to vote out of office the politicians who promote all this high stakes testing and who enrich their education management organization and test company cronies with no-bid contracts to bring tests, test prep materials and computer programs to track all the data from these tests.

Or to at least force them to knock off the testing.

In New York, that would be BOTH Bloomberg AND Cuomo.

In the country at large, that would be President Obama.

The revolt on this stuff IS coming.

In a few years, when EVERY NY teacher is going to be assessed by a value-added model with a 12%-35% margin of error and high stakes tests are given every six weeks in every subject in order for the state to do teacher evaluations, the system is going to be ALL FEAR AND ALL TEST PREP ALL THE TIME.

When that happens, you will see more and more stories like this Daily News story and the momentum will build to a crescendo to change the emphasis on testing.

Whether that succeeds against the high stakes testing companies and the Gates Foundation' power to influence policy, well, that's a whole other matter.

But the momentum against this IS building.