Dive Brief:
- New York City schools have paid the state Department of Education a collected $830,000 to avoid having to send their teachers out of the classroom for a few days to grade the state-mandated English Language Arts exams.
- New York's Department of Education requires schools to take teachers out of the classroom in order to grade the exams, but principals who don't want to lose their teachers for those days can pay the Department of Education $250 for a "replacement test scorer".
- If schools do the same next month for the grading of the state-mandated math tests, they will have spent an estimated $1.83 million to keep teachers in the classroom.
Dive Insight:
While this issue will most likely fade away as states move to move electronic exams (read about the issues those can cause here and here) the fact that so many public dollars are leaving schools just to keep teachers in the classroom seems counterintuitive to the point of standardized tests.
As standardized tests are being used more and more to assess not just student achievement but "teacher value," it seems counterproductive to send these valuable teachers out of the classroom.
While New York wants teachers to grade the tests so they can control for authentic answers — answers that teachers would recognize as falling within the expectations of the grade-level — it would perhaps make more sense to wait till summer break to grade the tests. Teachers could get paid extra to come in over their summer break to grade and no students would miss out on instruction time with their daily teacher. This is probably a far-fetched idea, but definitely feels more logical and cost-efficient.