In the province of Alberta, Canada the provincial exams only cover about 17% of the Program of Studies for a given grade. The exams are given in 3rd, 6th, 9th (I think) and 11th grades. That is why there is a push to eliminate them altogether and only use teachers' expert knowledge about their students as the basis of any kind of evaluation that may be needed and/or required. Elisa Waingort Calgary, Canada
I'm not sure if anyone has brought this up yet because I am behind in reading posts, but does your state have a state specifications that are released? I read an interesting article in The American Educator that points out that most states benchmarks are not correlated to the test specifications that they give the test makers. I have looked at ours (FL) when I was teaching intermediate and they are VERY eye opening. Were our benchmark may read something like "Students will learn how affixes work", the state specifications may say "In 3rd grade students will be able to use the prefixes un, re, and pre..." I highly recommend checking into this, because if I remember correctly that only about 3% of states correlate their benchmarks and test specifications. Julie
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