Unfortunately, this author is not trying to be humorous. What has “education” come to?
You know it’s time to retire when you cannot keep up with the acronyms. Florida Assessment of Student Thinking (actually a decent name that gives away the longstanding pretense that the reading test is testing reading) is an easy one for Grumpy Old Teacher (GOT) to puzzle out, but he admits B.E.S.T. keeps him googling for the B: Benchmarks for Excellence in Student Thinking.
And that tips us off that while Ringling Brothers retired the elephants and the pungent smell of elephant dung departed from the Big Top, well, that Florida smell of standardized testing remains no matter what we call it.
And yes, GOT has an attitude and is proud of it.
The first problem with F.A.S.T. is that Florida is moving too fast; it is implementing a new test before they are ready. For those…
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education pathways 
My sister is a special ed teacher in California and my niece is a teacher in Alabama, and the stories they tell… They both have issues with standardized testing, especially my sister who teaches special ed.
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The Special Education testing is problematic in many states. How much sense does it make for us to have special coordinators/lead teachers examine the results of diagnosticians’ lengthy testing and gather those specialists with parents to decide on a child’s IEP (individualized education program) so that the child can achieve success based on his/her needs and then test them with the rest of the student body in ways that are inappropriate to their abilities and learning styles?
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Teaching to the test….UGH!
There has to be a better way than spending educational time on standardized tests and preparing for the tests.
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I couldn’t agree more. This testing has gone from nonsense to destructive.
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I have never been an advocate of Standardized Testing. I taught students with various learning issues for years, and it was always such an injustice. Now they exempt students based on their designation, teach to the test, pit schools against one another and so on. Such a waste.
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We are on the same page with overtesting! What a disservice w do to children when we subject them to Standardized Testing.
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