Dear Teacher, What's Best for My Child About All This Testing?

It's springtime! You are at that time of the school year when the annual administration of the SAT-9 comes around, and there is a frenzy among your fellow teachers and the school administration. There is a mixture of inevitability, anxiety, anger, and even some pep-rally mood excitement as the school prepares for what appears to have become an annual ritual for California schools.

As you organize your desk at the end of the day, your phone rings, and it is from a concerned mother of one of your students. She is a Latina who-- from the parent conferences about her 5th grade son -- you know has more English proficiency than most other parents, even though she very recently immigrated to the United States. You don't know for sure, but she appears well-educated and not afraid to ask questions. She has been talking with some of her fellow parents, all parents of children who are English learners, and they are concerned about the upcoming test. After some discussion, she agreed to call you on their behalf. She says that her child is among the most recent arrivals to this country, having been here for less than one year. Her friends vary, from having been here one year to even those who were born here but are still considered English learners. The questions she raises are the following:

  1. Many of the parents, myself included, are thinking of signing a request that our child not participate in SAT-9 testing because they really don't know enough English to do well on it. Is there any harm done to my child by not participating? Is there harm by participating? Are there any benefits to participating?
  2. If I decide to have my child participate, can I request some special considerations for accomodations in the testing process, and what are they?
  3. Can my child take a test in Spanish? If so, what good does that do?
  4. What's CELDT? My neighbor has a son in the same school who does not have to take CELDT, so why does my son have to?
  5. More generally, can you give me some good reasons why there's all this testing going around? Is there too much testing? What's best for my child about testing? Will it improve the schools and get rid of bad teachers? Any advice on why we should think this is a good thing for our community?

She would like to organize a group of parents to come meet with you to discuss these and other questions about testing -- at the end of this week!

Time for a crash course in testing.... The first place you visit is that California State Department of Education's website on the state tests:

http://www.cde.ca.gov/statetests

You also find some specific documents that provide you with some specific guides including:

A Parent's Guide to Achievement Testing

Standardized Testing and Reporting Program: Q and A's about the Primary Language Test

From your CLAD course, you also have a reading from the UCLA center on testing (by Jamal Abedi click here for the document) that tells you about accomodations in testing.

Finally, you also have a more general video on testing from the Merrow Report (CD #2) that can serve as a general resource about why there is so much testing in the schools..

Please prepare your advice to the questions posed by the parent (as well as any additional ideas on this topic that you think pertinent) in the form of a handout that you would prepare and pass out at the meeting (this could be in English, although ideally you would have this in Spanish for the parents). The points on the handout should be self-evident, but they do not have to be in complete text as you expect to use them as "talking points". Feel free to use diagrams and pictures if you'd like.

This problem was last updated 3/22/02