HSA Week

In Maryland, there are four High School Assessments: Biology, Algebra, Government, and English 2. I'm not sure why those disciplines were the ones chosen to assess (why Biology over Earth Science? Why Government over History? Why English 2 over English 1?), but those are pretty close to the end-all, be-all for what the state cares about. Since they eliminated writing from the tests a year or so ago, everything is multiple choice. English and, I guess, Algebra, are skills-based, but Biology and Government both have got to be mainly content-based, I'm guessing.

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Assessing these four subject areas creates an entire week of basically very little instruction. Students test from 8 o'clock until noon, then have shortened classes in the afternoon. However, attendance gets pretty poor in the afternoon, so the days are mostly wasted. I make it very, very clear to students and parents that I expect them to be there in the afternoons for class, but I still missed about a quarter of my students today. Those students -- the 9th graders -- had an HSA in the morning. I'm not sure if attendance will increase or decrease the rest of the week, when their grade level does not have an HSA. That means students have to report to school at noon, and that prospect seems dubious for a lot of them. It's frustrating, to say the least, especially with only 8 days of class left in the school year (exams at our school start on June 2).

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It's worth noting that our district has lost roughly three weeks to snow emergencies this year. I'm not sure what the final day count was, but we lost the week before Christmas, plus the roughly two weeks of blizzard in February. The state did not push back testing dates despite the snow, something that I find entirely ridiculous.

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For us non-HSA tested-area teachers, the HSA week is remarkably easy. I arrive at my usual time, then have four hours of time in my classroom. Today, I spent much of the morning grading papers for students I will teach text year. In a two-year course, I'm trying to return their two-year essay first drafts before the summer. This has never been attempted before, but I think it could lead to an easier senior year for them and for me. I also planned a bang-up Othello lesson, and did some organizing of files.

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