A front-page article in Tuesday’s newspaper contained a stunning number: 1,000.
That was the approximate number of new standardized tests Orange County is debuting this year to keep up with all the demands of Florida’s education mandates.
We’re talking about standardized tests for P.E. and band. For kindergartners and brain-damaged children. For cooking classes, debate classes and gobs of variations of science, math and more.
This in a state where some schools have already reported as many as one out of every three school days is interrupted by some sort of testing, test drills or test preparation.
If you didn’t think this state’s testing insanity was out of control before, you now have 1,000 new reasons to wake up.
Most parents I know have no problem with year-end and standardized tests. We grew up priming for SATs and AP exams. We want to see how our kids compare.
But we also know that tests should be the measuring stick — not the focus of the entire year. We know it is nonsensical to ax entire quarters of science classes, for instance, just to run testing drills.
