Change The LAUSD

Teaching to the test. Then testing. The rhythm of education in LAUSD today. 

LAUSD is robbing your children of a well rounded education, a proper education, an education like they gave you before all the tests.

Teaching to the test. Then testing. The rhythm of education in LAUSD today.

Test scores, tests scores: compare them, improve them, at what cost to the students? At what costs to their futures?

Teaching to the test. Then testing. The rhythm of education in LAUSD today.

The fun is gone. The creativity is gone. The education in LAUSD has become a business. No longer are the students the bottom line--tests scores are.

LAUSD elementary students are completing the wasteful, monotonous DIBELS today.

Each teacher in Kindergarten through fifth grade has to sit in front of a computer with each student one at a time, while the student reads to the teacher. 

The teacher must hear the same passage over and over again. The tests take 7-8 minutes per student for fourth and fifth grade. Thirty or more students are in the fourth and fifth grade classes.

The rest of the class must work independently while the teacher concentrates on the test. Kindergarteners and first graders have to work independently, which is not easy for them.

A once a year test which takes no more than 2 hours on one day.

One hour to measure each students’ Language Art progress and one hour to measure each students’ Math progress.

That’s it—no quarterly tests, no fluency tests, no teaching to the test, no following the test calendar, and no evaluating teachers using test scores. 

Any professional educator, after a just a few weeks with his or her students can tell each students' strengths and weaknesses, needs and areas for growth. No paperwork--no testing.

Why are kids in school? 

They are taught to the tests following the testing calendar. They are taught in a one size fits all program where every class on the same grade and every class on the same subject is covering the same skill at the same time.

They are taught not to mastery, but to pass the tests. That’s all! They are taught quickly covering a skill in two to three days with an insufficient amount of practice on the skill in class and at home. There is no time for review or remediation of the skill. There is no time to bring children up to grade level on the skills that they did not master in previous grades.

They start testing and tracking the students in Kindergarten. Some of the students are still 4 years old. Kindergarten used to be about left and right, getting along with others, finger painting, singing and dancing, stories, and reading readiness for some. Now the students are tested and tracked, tested and tracked.

that testing is the best use of instructional time and resources for the students of LAUSD?

You never come to the schools. Members of the board, you are politicians, not educators, and the downtown administrators who once worked in a schools and now advise you, forgot what it was like two seconds after they left the schools.

Yet, you spend the money; you order the tests; tell the teachers what to teach; buy the lousiest textbooks; cut support staff and supplies from the schools; raise class sizes; and then raise hell with the principals, who raise hell with the teachers if test scores don't go up.

So what gives you the right to judge each teacher by his or her test scores?

Teaching is not testing. Teachers have a heart and care about the students first and test scores last.