With testing so much in the news, I thought I would drop a quick note to tell you about a recent occurrence here in my district. A math teacher who teaches Trigonometry, a class for which there is a state Regents exam, pointed out the following trap for teachers.
He has some students in Trig who wanted to take the class to challenge themselves, but may not do very well on the Regents exam. Most of these students don’t need to pass the exam to graduate as they have fulfilled their math requirements already.
So, some of them may decide to blow off the exam, though they still have to take it because it is the final exam for the course; others may give their best effort on the exam to see how well they can do, but may not score very well. Yet all of these scores are going to be used to judge the teacher as part of his APPR score here in New York.
So, the teachers now have an incentive to prevent students from challenging themselves and trying higher level math. After all, if they challenge themselves but don’t do well on the exam, it hurts the teacher more than the student.
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