... testing were organized in a sane way and communicated to the staff beforehand?

PSSA. NAEP. PSSA Make-up. Weekly assessment. Constructed responses! All of these take time to implement in the classroom - time that could be spent actually teaching our students. The past two weeks saw all of them at once - a mandated weekly bubble assessment; constructed responses in all core classes, the PSSA taking 1st and 2nd period away from ALL 11th grade students, and then a retake to give them another opportunity to take it (during which many of them cut). And, to top it all off, the NAEP test took some of our best students away from classes they need without very much warning (an announcement telling students to go to various different rooms without explaining it beforehand is not enough). These tests are taking valuable time away from instruction - valuable time away from learning. If we want to call ourselves educators, we should spend more time educating and less time being so testy!

By the way, if you ever have comments/questions/suggestions please do not hesitate to send them to me at this email address or to whistle.blower1682@gmail.com. Or, if you missed the email this week because of a block on District addresses, please send me a non-SDP email address you would like me to send to.