Home | How It Works | Stats Login | Register         Case: Administrative Woes Mrs. Banks and her sixth grade colleagues are having an issue with giving assessments. The district mandates each content-area department to give a nine-weeks exam that covers all material taught during each grading period. The assessment contains between thirty to forty multiple-choice questions and two constructed-response questions for each content area. Many students are not finishing the assessments within the one class period allotted; therefore, teachers are taking two days to give nine-weeks exams. The administration have instructed teachers to give the exam in one day, whether the students have finished or not. How should Mrs. Banks and her team handle this situation? Should the teachers test for one day and not allow the students to finish to appease the administration? How will they collect effective data if the students do not complete the assessment? Solution: (Rates are posted for this solution!) In my experience, administration wants teachers to give students extra time, especially if there are many students not finishing. They take this complaint themselves to the district to let them know the assessment is too long for a class period. At our school, the tests must be checked in at the end of each day, so if administration does not want the teachers to take longer, there is no way for them to take longer. I would say this grievance needs to be expressed to administration with the reasons why this does not seem fair to students. Is the district exam a part of student grades? If so, I would think that everyone wants to give students every opportunity to succeed. All of our assessments in math are 30-40 questions with 1-2 constructed responses, and students get these completed in a class period, which means they will have no problem with a district assessment that models this format. I am not sure how this works out for other subject areas. In the beginning, students get a shock with the length and time allotment, but they adapt and learn to study more and use test taking strategies.