GothamSchools — daily independent reporting on NYC public schools

After four months of continuous test prep for January’s English Language Arts exam, her fifth graders refuse even to engage with the text anymore, reports They Call Me Teacher:

My students give up before the test prep reading is even handed to them. They already know what answer they are going to choose… without even reading the options (or the story). They have already mastered the fake reading… where they look blankly at the text and then, after a few moments, move on. No matter how many times we model, partner, attempt to hold students accountable with underlining and highlighting and written explanations of why the answer they chose are the best answer… it doesn’t follow through into testing. These students are completely capable of finding the most basic answers in the text, but they don’t care. It’s not important to them. … And WHO could blame them?