Thanks guys. I live in NYS. I agree they do an inordinate amount of prep. I don't believe they do the MAP here. Cricket3 seems like she'd know, I'm some distance behind in trying to get a handle on everything.
My DD would probably love to see that potato gun. What does it do? Does it shoot out potatoes for planting or is it more of a weapon idea? DD draws little creatures and makes up websites and writes the URLs in the margins in fancy lettering.
That's interesting, AlexsMom, about what the teacher did. I wasn't there but DD is pretty accurate with what's going on. It wouldn't be the first time something odd happened with us at this school.
She took the CTY last year (2nd grade) and qualified for verbal (math she missed by a couple of points). It didn't make any difference to the school. We had her tested in K and those KTEA >99th percentile scores coming into the school as a new student in Sept. 2010 didn't make any difference for placement. It didn't even prompt them to do their own assessments.
I thought in theory they might respect/care about their own state assessments more than the outside stuff.
They tell us informally at conferences about her reading level/fluency being so high "she doesn't have to get any better at it" and in "popcorn reading" her group has been reading the same book since Sept. I guess to make some sort of accommodation, they allow the kids who don't feel comfortable taking their turn reading out loud to hold up a sticky note that says they "choose" not to read out loud. DD of course grabs this chance (smirk smirk) and holds us her sticky note. For the multiplication timed tests, the teacher switched from written to oral after the 3x and they could "choose" which ones to be tested on and she kept choosing the 5x (smirk smirk).
So you can see it's a bit ridiculous, at least to me and probably quite a few parents who read this forum who are like-minded.
I've notice people discussing the EXPLORE and think it would be a good idea for next year. I don’t know if the school would pay attention but it would be a good, national gauge of where she is.
I think I'll plan on at least bringing up the topic of the assessments in the conference that we are planning to schedule before the end of school. She's supposed to have the same teacher next year per the loop system they do. I realize the bar is very low with these state assessments, but was hoping they "prove" something to the teacher since the school has been going on about the bar being raised per the adoption of the common core standards.
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Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. Albert Einstein
Last edited by bzylzy; 04/18/12 07:46 AM.
