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Learn Me Good 2

Mister Teacher rants, raves, and comments about life as a 3rd grade math teacher
Stupid test

Good evening everyone, as you might gather from the title of this post, I am not too enamored with a test I took today after school. Actually, I am currently exhibiting extreme self-control not to express exactly how ticked off I am at this test.

Here in Texas, we call it the TELPAS. Don't ask me what it stands for -- I'm sure the T is for Texas, and the rest is a bunch of crap. It's a test that teachers have to take in order to be able to rate writing samples from kids of Limited English Proficiency (LEP). Teachers go online and view collections of four or five writing samples, and they have to rate them -- beginning, intermediate, advanced, or advanced high. The ratings are EXTREMELY subjective, and this is what upsets me so much.

I spent nearly 2 hours online today after school looking at example passages and then taking this stupid test. There were 15 collections to analyze. In order to pass the test, I had to rate 10 of them correctly. So of course, you can probably guess how many I got right. NINE.

So this leads me to this week's

INTERACTIVE MONDAY!!

Here's the question for the week:

Have you ever had to go through anything completely subjective like this, and what was it like? Please share your stories of frustration, triumphant, and heartbreak.

Meanwhile, I'll go take solace in some left over Valentine's Day candy.

Come on over to the main site -- Learn Me Good -- and join the discussion!

Posted: Monday, February 18, 2008 8:31 PM by misterteacher

Comments

Kathryn said:

They made us get TELPAS trained a few years ago,  our whole faculty of about 280 teachers and AP's and then about half way through all of our training sessions,  they said,

"Oh, sorry.  We misinterpreted the State's rules.  You don't ALL have to be trained. Just some of you.  But since we have already started the process in training all of you,  let's just have everybody be trained.   It will only help you understand the process better."

Everybody doesn't have to be trained.

# February 26, 2008 5:01 PM

vamplita said:

The only thing worse than taking that stupid test is actually having to collect all of the bloody samples and score them.  The collection process is a friggin' nightmare.  There are samples I can't use because the teacher didn't make the students put the darned date on the paper, and there are other teachers who just let the student turn in a blank sheet.  Just how, precisely, is THAT a writing sample, I ask you??  I'm soooo sick to death of TELPAS, I could just barf.

# March 13, 2008 10:07 AM
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