It’s Not Teaching to the Test

• Jeff feels that the best way to ensure that schools perform well on annual assessments is to hire highly qualified teachers with exemplarily human relations skills and to establish a climate and culture that allows them to make the most of the instructional time. You can expose students to practice tests, but don’t spend too much time doing so.
• The big push on tests it to help teachers learn how to write better test items for measuring what students are learning. To this end teachers should work together and share.
• Here are some tips. Avoid wordiness, difficult vocabulary, and complex sentences. Use essay questions only for learning outcomes that cannot be measured other ways. These will be higher-level thinking skills. Also use performance and portfolio assessments when possible.

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