Wasting money on BlackLine Test Practice Books

Teaching to the Test stress pushes us to do strange things.

The lure of plopping down your money for BlackLine Master Books to enable our Teaching to the Test efforts is great.

It is psychologically inviting and mentally comforting to just pick up something that will save you hours of work for only $12.95, or $14.95, or $16.95.

But, this is strange solace.

The reason that these BlackLine Master practice tests fail to drive your Teaching to the Test success is that the tests never cover what you are teaching.

This causes a break from what you were teaching to what is in the BlackLine practice book. What a "bummer."

Worse, students get the idea (and you don't have to tell them either) that testing is something apart from real learning.

Besides, students know about the stress that teachers are under about "raising test scores." They feel the pressure, too.

So, Teaching to the Test suffers when you "slap a BlackLine master test practice activity on students because their stress levels jump..."You are testing your students on something that you haven't taught."

So, Teaching to the Test has to be a "Something else kind of thing" than BlackLine master practice book activities to be successful.

Just what that is, we'll cover in subsequent posting of this blog.

If you have invested in BlackLine master Teaching to the Test books, don't throw them away. But, be prepared to use them in more useful ways than photocopying class sets and sitting students quietly at their desks for hours while you administer them in "test-like" settings.

You can do better, and we'll reveal how.


Tell your friends about our Teaching to the Test Blog.

Teaching to the Test