ISTEP testing

My small school staff of 10 teachers had an interesting discussion the other day regarding the ISTEP test. We were brainstorming for more ways to help prepare our students for those DIFFICULT standardized tests.

I work mostly with 9th and 10th graders in Special Education. The majority of them lack basic math skills, but they are able to catch on to Pre-Algebra concepts when relying on calculators for support. During our meeting, a middle school teacher said, "I'm not really sure what I should be teaching these guys. In order for them to move on to Algebra, they have to know their basic operations. They won't understand Algebra if they don't understand what multiplication means." A few other teachers shared the opinion that it was more important to focus completely on the Algebra skills, because that is what the ISTEP would be testing. This is just another example of the phrase "teaching the test" that we hear so often.