Curriculum issues with teachers

Hi, I work as a part-time middle school TA, but I used to be a full time teacher (currently in grad school).

One of my main assignments is to create classroom materials including assessments based on what the teachers give me. I used to work very collaboratively with my assigned teachers to create these materials, largely because I have a master's degree in one of the subjects taught, and I have several years of full time teaching experience, mostly at the middle school level.

I have no idea what happened exactly, but think I overstepped in my zeal to offer my expertise and perhaps someone said something to them I'm not aware of sometime in January, but they asked me to stop bringing in my own experience, and to just create the unit reviews, study guides, online quiz games, and google forms assessments which are the graded assignments for the students based solely on questions they give me.

They know what's being covered in the class best, so I understand an aspect of this, but for the last several units they have been asking me to create these materials by copying them from printouts of "Quizzizz" quizzes. Many of the questions are factually incorrect and/or misleading, and include spelling and grammar errors that make it appear that they were possibly not even in English originally.

Aside from the need to correct these questions for content on the students' assessments, the resulting assessments are very problematic because they contain only one sentence questions "ID" style multiple choice questions, while the standardized test the students will need to take at the end of the year (which will count for a significant portion of their grade) is over 50% read and respond to longer passages, and half of those are asking students to respond to primary sources, according to the latest released version of this course's final exam from a previous year.

I understand we have some very low performing students, but they are separated into "low" and "high" performing classes, and when I was more involved in the process in the fall, I worked to create different assessments for the two groups, both of which we discussed previously would be designed to gradually introduce students to more complicated kinds of questions.

I met with the teachers this week to ask if we could resume collaborating in a way that was more similar to what we were doing in the fall, because I had concerns about the assessment creation process drawing exclusively from the printed out "quizzizz" quizzes.

I also suggested that they pull assessment materials from the students' textbooks instead of "quizzizz" printouts, if they were uncomfortable collaborating with me to create questions.

The teachers told me that there may not even be a standardized test because it may have been cancelled, and they were not sure. I was also told that I needed to just create the material from the "quizzizz" assessments, and if I see a mistake or have a concern, do not bring it to their attention, but if someone else says something about it, explain that the teachers are responsible, so it is not "my fault."

I called our county's office of accountability and testing (we are a full public school, not private or charter), and they confirmed that the students will be required to take the final exam standardized test.

I feel deeply uncomfortable with this situation. I can't "pass the buck" so to speak and create assessments for students with information that I know is factually incorrect, and I am very worried for our students academic future knowing how unprepared they will be for the final, and probably for their classes next year (if they are not retained).

I know that the assessments are not the only thing the students are getting, but I also make copies of all the material and can see that it is not "filling in the gaps" missing in terms of what would need to be there to approach the standard course of study and adequate prep for the final.

I have not approached anyone with these specific concerns besides the teachers in question, but I really don't know what to do.

Submitted February 28, 2020 at 03:40PM by Anonymusk https://ift.tt/3ch98dZ