Phase II Ready

Now that the troublesome Phase I of TNReady is over, districts in coming weeks will move to TNReady Phase II.

Grace Tatter over at Chalkbeat has more on what Phase II means for students and schools:

The second part of TNReady features mainly multiple-choice questions (although, unlike in years past, students sometimes will be able to select several choices.) It has about 60 questions each for math and English, split up over two days. When the test originally was to be administered online, Part II also was supposed to include interactive questions in which students could use drag-and-drop tools, but those won’t be possible on the paper version.

So, multiple choice, no interactive questions, and shorter testing times for this phase.

It’s worth noting that the test is in two phases and includes significantly more total testing time than was common in years past — up to 11 hours.

Also, at least one district is seriously discussing the option of not administering Phase II at all in light of all the disruption caused by the false start on Phase I.

What do you think? Is 11 hours of testing too much for the youngest students? Should Tennessee districts skip Phase II this year and focus on instruction instead of test prep?

For more on education politics and policy in Tennessee, follow @TNEdReport

 

4 thoughts on “Phase II Ready

  1. The statement about multiple-choice only for Part II is incorrect. I would have thought so too after looking at the state’s own website: http://www.tennessee.gov/education/topic/testing-dates

    It indicates that the Part II only has multi choice and multiselect answers. However, this is incorrect. Part II was intended to be fully machine-scored. It was to be electronically delivered and was to have items for math that could be scored by equations entered into a box. Now that the test is on paper, the items for the computer are being straight transfered to paper. There are fill in the blank questions on Part II.

    Apparently this is how Part II was always going to be, because the pratice test (only 18 questions are you kidding me, when the real test is 45?) shows these type of items.

    So no it is not just multiple choice, and yes the state’s own website is wrong. The instructions they are now distributing to schools in preparation of administering Part II make it clear that there will be other item types on Part II, regardless of anything that has been said/communicated earlier.

    • Sam, how do you know this? Is there another source for information that we teachers need to contact other than TDOE?

  2. Pingback: Tennessee Education Report | Ready to Refuse

  3. Pingback: Tennessee Education Report | Still Not F*&#ing Ready

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