Spring Break and Spring Testing

Age the age of thirtyone, I decided what I really wanted to be when I grew up was a teacher. I had been involved in coaching for several years (and several sports) and realized that I enjoyed sharing my skills and knowledge with the younger generation more than I enjoyed my job. I come from a family of teachers and administrators so I knew what I was getting into, it wasn't a pipe dream of perfect students and ideal classes. After finishing college and getting that first job 17 years ago, I can still say I have never had a bad day teaching. It is a something I look forward to everyday. However I also really enjoy summer break, winter break, and especially spring break. When you live in the frozen north like I do, a chance to go some place where you can feel the warm of the sun and play golf without snow drifts is always a pleasure to anticipate.

The time following spring break is usually the busiest of the year for me. I over see the training and provide support for all the online high stakes testing required by our state. With 16000 students and 24 sites this can be a lot of work. I am just wondering whether any of you are experiencing the same issues as we experience here.

Issues:
1. Loss of technology for students and teachers - testing consumes most or all of the computer labs in our buildings for 10-14 days a year. This is a bigger issue in the spring as more end of the year research papers are required by our curriculum. It will cause some major issues in some of our sites next year as we equalize the number of computers in each of our sites to a 3 student to 1 computer ratio (part of budget reductions). This will reduce the number of student labs in a few sites. We also will add another online test next year that will require an addition 8-10 days of lab time for each of the high schools

2. Bandwidth - we currently have a 100M pipeline because we experienced some bandwidth issues at a 50M. Our bandwidth is the exception to what most district have and is an issue.

3. Set up - Even though we push a lot of the software there still is a component that requires someone to touch each of the test computers. This requires at least a day prior to each testing cycle at each of the sites.

4. Training and proctor subs - the state requires a certified teacher in each of the testing labs yet provides no funding for paying subs to cover classes for those teachers. We also have to provide yearly training for proctors again with no funding available. This will be a real issue next year for us because of budget cuts in staff development funds in our district.

Hope you all had a great break and are making that final push to the end of the year.