Reclaim Your Classroom

Texas AFT today launched a campaign to begin monitoring testing in schools to ensure that instructional time isn’t lost to an overemphasis on testing.
 
“We’re telling teachers parents and students that it’s time to reclaim your classroom as a place for real learning inspiration and creativity” said Linda Bridges Texas AFT president.

“It’s time to reclaim your classroom as a place that isn’t judged solely by TAKS tests and isn’t bogged down in the drudgery of endless test preparation. It’s time to reclaim your classroom as a place where students receive the help they need to succeed rather than confusing and sometimes arbitrary determinations of success and failure.”

Texas AFT is distributing “Reclaim Your Classroom Test Watch” cards in schools across the state and on the internet so that teachers parents and students can track how much time is spent on testing—including standardized tests like TAKS. The cards also track the inordinate amount of time spent preparing for and even developing tests.

“More than half of the teachers surveyed told us they’re spending more than 50 percent of their class time on testing and a large majority note that testing is taking away valuable instruction time and hurting other course work” Bridges said. “That’s just insane and we’ve got to start putting the pressure on local officials state lawmakers and Congress to change our testing system now.”

Bridges noted that Texas AFT’s work in the past on reforming the testing system has produced notable results. For example state Senate Bill 1031—passed last spring—bans the use of more than 10 percent of instructional days for district-mandated tests for any student in grades subject to standardized testing.

District testing does not include the TAKS test but it does include the often time-intensive benchmark testing.

“Our Test Watch Team members will be our eyes and ears on campuses across the state to make sure that administrators are complying with the recent law limiting district testing” Bridges said.

Why is now the time to reclaim our classrooms? Texas AFT began the movement to change testing in Texas in 2005 after it heard from scores of member teachers that the current testing system is destroying educational opportunities for our schoolchildren. Surveys of teachers confirmed the anecdotal evidence and Texas AFT learned that more than half of all teachers spend more than half their time preparing for and taking standardized test.

Some 87 percent said that the TAKS test resulted in a significant loss of instructional time. More than 93 percent reported the quality of education had dropped in subjects not tested by TAKS.

In response Texas AFT formed a task force to develop a detailed plan for reform including three simple action steps:

• Give students credit for the progress they make instead of penalizing them for not meeting accountability standards based on tests that don’t accurately measure growth in student achievement.

• Eliminate the confusion and contradictions between state and federal accountability systems. Currently a school campus can be rated unacceptable on the federal level and acceptable on the state level or vice versa.

• Restore the authority for test preparation to teachers and ensure the appropriate use of standardized testing as a diagnostic tool that helps focus resources where they are needed.

To learn more about “Reclaim Your Classroom” visit www.texasaft.org

Texas AFT (formerly the Texas Federation of Teachers) represents more than 57000 teachers paraprofessionals support personnel and higher-education employees across the state. Texas AFT is affiliated with the 1.3-million-member American Federation of Teachers.