The wrong way to evaluate students

By Angie Sullivan, Las Vegas

Sunday, Sept. 21, 2014 | 2:01 a.m.

My at-risk, 5-year-old students recently took a discovery learning online test. I had my doubts about the test because most of these students know fewer than 10 letters.

The academic content was the least of my worries when we got to the computer lab. Almost all of students had difficulty operating a computer mouse.

To make matters worse, the test required the students to scroll — using either the roller on the mouse, the arrow buttons on the keyboard or the side scroll. If students did not scroll, they would not be able to see answer choices or proceed.

This test may claim it evaluated students’ reading skills, but it actually measured family socioeconomics and whether their families could afford a computer and an Internet connection.

The test was invalid because my students could not participate in any way to produce data to show academic content knowledge.

I will be held accountable for these scores, which doesn’t make this veteran schoolteacher who knows how to teach reading very happy.

Is there someone in the wealthier parts of town who thought it was easy? Probably. But most of the kids in Las Vegas likely had an experience similar to mine because this is a large portion of our community.

Failing kids is easy. Will my state ever find the resources to begin teaching them? Supporting them? Giving them the resources they need?