excuse me while my head explodes

So. How's my week been?

I'm in the midst of testing all of our LEP (Limited English Proficiency) students. In dealing with the K-6 students, I have to test each of them on oral comprehension and production (known in the normal human world as listening and speaking), then administer a reading/writing test. here's the catch... nearly ALL of the students at our school are LEP. That's over 100 students that I have to test. There's only one version of the test, so I have to ask the same inane questions about the same inane pictures over and over and over and over and over and over and over... only to have my (educated, but not No Child Left Behind-sanctioned) infomal evaluation of a given student's language level affirmed. Well, there have been a few surprises, but for the most part, I can predict what level they'll test at. I know that having consistency in testing is important, but didn't they consider Teacher Sanity Levels at ALL while designing these tests?!

It sucks.

See, what I like about teaching is that it provides consistency and structure (which I need in my life) but it's not monotonous (which would drive me insane). Testing has thrown both of those out the window... I'm no longer operating on my normal schedule AND I'm having to do very tedious, repetitive, somewhat mindless work.

Next week, our students take their Big Scary State Test. Then we get the results and find out that (SURPRISE!) our students didn't score as well as someone thousands of miles away says they should. Must be my fault. Never mind that a given student may have scored better than next year... if he's still below an acceptable level, we clearly haven't done a good job. Sure he was two years behind grade level last year and now he's only one year behind, but dammit, what's wrong with our school?

All hail Standardized Testing!