Another Reading Assessment?

Monday I received the third directive to do the “DRA” assessment with all of my students who are not proficient on either the Spring CSAP tests or last week’s Benchmark Reading test.  “Proficient” is the word that Denver Public Schools have decided upon for what we used to call “reading at grade level.”  (Personally I think the word proficient is an unfortunate choice, suggesting mastery skills where they doubtfully exist).  The directive was adamant that I cannot pass this job of the DRA assessments off to an assistant.  I must do them myself.  I have been told that each one takes about 20 minutes.

Upon checking the students’ CSAP scores from last spring, I find that 15 of my students—half of them—are not proficient.  Fifteen times 20 minutes is 300 minutes or 5 hours.  And five continuous hours is out of the question during a school day, of course.  So with the “setting aside” of other lessons and projects on my desk in order to conduct these tests and gathering up the student with the proper materials, I am sure that half an hour here and there for several weeks would be required, and the timei more like 8 hours than five.  Still, that does not count the time lost for all the other students due to interrupted instruction.  If you take that 8 hours and multiply it times all the students in the class who will lose my full attention, you can see why this request is an outrageous assault on my goal of “time to teach.”

My solution:  On Friday students don’t come to school so that teachers can score the Benchmark tests.  Since I spent last weekend scoringi the math section of that test ( an effort to make use of the results as soon as possible so that the testing would have some merit), I have decided to score the reading section tonight so that I can bring those 15 students in to school on Friday and, hopefully, conduct these DRA assessments during that day set aside for the Benchmark test scoring.

I wrote a letter this morning that I’ll send out to the parents in hopes that they can bringi their kids in.