Mr. Duncan- 90 periods lost forever

Dear Arne Duncan,

Your latest tweet got me thinking. 

Just how much will my kids miss next year, due to your policies? Looking at our new teacher evaluation scheme in NY (APPR), Race to the Top, NCLB and the infamous Common Core, I’ve done some rough calculations.

• New York State now requires 9 hours of standardized testing
• APPR mandated District assessments ( approx 3 hours)
• Special area subject assessments due to NYS’s APPR ( Science, Music, PE, Art,  etc)  twice per year ( appox 1 hour each)
• District assessments due to APPR for Science and Math used to evaluate teachers ( twice per year each= 4 hours)
• District benchmark assessments per quarter for Math and ELA ( 8 hours)
• I now take attendance 3 times per day for VAM data – ( 1 minute each time= 9 hours/year)
• Due to new Common Core standards, I’ll most likely have at least 1 day of professional development ( 7 hours)
• New York State usually has a their students complete a field test – ( 1.5 hours)
• Practice time to expose kids to testing procedures and format- ( 1 hour/day for 2 weeks= 10 hours)
• Common Core standards requires  Math fluency that must be assessed ( 1 hour)

Approximate lost learning time next year due to your policies–  60 hours!

Given a 40 minute typical class period, my students will lose 90 class periods of learning time. Lost forever Mr. Duncan, forever!

So what’s the plan to deal with these unintended consequences Mr. Secretary?

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