В Теннесси введут дополнительный несчетный тест по письму для учеников 2–8 классов

More TCAP testing is coming: Tennessee adds writing field test for grades 2-8 CHATTANOOGA, Tenn. — Tennessee students will spend more time taking the TCAP this school year, but part of that extra work won't count toward their scores. The Tennessee Department of Education is adding an unscored writing field test for students in grades 2 through 8 as part of the English Language Arts portion of the Tennessee Comprehensive Assessment Program. The state says students' answers will be used to help develop questions for future TCAP exams. But the change comes with a cost: more time spent testing. Depending on their grade, students will spend an additional 28 to 85 minutes taking the TCAP because of the new writing portion. That has some educators questioning how much testing is too much. "We overtest our kids," said JC Bowman, CEO and executive director of Professional Educators of Tennessee. Bowman says TCAP isn't the only assessment students encounter during the school year, pointing to programs such as i-Ready that schools use to measure students' progress. "It's test fatigue, and I think kids are hearing that, because they're constantly tested," Bowman said. "You have iReady being used already that they're measuring benchmarks coming in and testing." Because the new writing questions are a field test, students won't be graded on their responses this year. Instead, the Department of Education will use those responses to evaluate and develop questions that could appear on future versions of the state assessment. The amount of additional testing time will vary by grade, with the youngest and oldest students not necessarily spending the same amount of time on the new section. For students, though, the immediate change is straightforward: More writing and more time taking the TCAP, even though the new portion won't affect their score. Depend on us to keep you posted.