The Revenge of Testing Season
The most wonderful time of the school year
My memory of it is clearly carved: a bright, spherical hall, hundreds of round, little-boy heads, an Pliapa, our mathematics teacher. We called him Pliapa— he was rather vintage and disheveled, and when the monitor inserted his plug from behind, the loudspeaker started up “Plya-plya-plya-tshhhhh,” and then the lesson began.
-We, Yevgeny Zamyatin (Translator: Natasha Randall)
Last year around this time, I wrote a piece called “The TAM vs Mental Health”. While many things have changed since then, the central point is truer than ever: after years of using the pandemic as inspiration/ cover for all kinds of supposedly big Shakeups™, Disruptions™, and Reforms™ in education, we mostly just went back to what we always do: test, test, test.
The TAM vs. "Mental Health"
If a fire drill or bomb threat occurs during testing, TAs should collect online testing rosters, online test tickets, and other secure materials as the students leave the room. -Data Recognition Company, “SC EOCEP Test Administration Manual for Online and Paper Testing
As Indiana science teacher Ronak Shah puts it in his excellent recent piece for Chalkbeat,
Students, teachers, …
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