A heart-breaking look at teaching in the U.S. I am deathly afraid that Canada is headed down this path.
This third grade teacher responded to the post and comments about the heavy emphasis on testing students in third grade.
She wrote:
I thought that maybe a third grade teacher in NC should weigh in on this. I can only speak for what is occurring in my county, but here is what I am up against: I have to complete all reading 3D data within an approximate 2 week period. This involves a three minute fill in the blank test (whole class), three one minute timed reads with three one minute retells of each read, and a diagnosis of a students independent reading level by testing their reading, writing, and oral comprehension of leveled passages. The writing consists of two questions which are scored against a rubric and you must take the LOWER of the two scores. This must be completed on every student in my class.
In addition, our…
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suburbanprincessteacher 
Fortunately, Canada is not headed on the same path. I taught in North Carolina for 20 years, but moved to Canada in 2012 and have been studying the two systems quite a bit.
I got a chance to ask John Abbott http://www.21learn.org/staff/john-abbott/, creator of the 21st Century Learning Initiative, if Canada was headed down the same educational path as the US and he said no. England is, but Canada is headed in the right direction.
Look at Canada’s 2012 PISA scores on p. 19,35,36. http://www.cmec.ca/Publications/Lists/Publications/Attachments/318/PISA2012_CanadianReport_EN_Web.pdf British Columbia scored better than Finland this time.
British Columbia is currently reworking its entire vision of the curriculum where they are trying to implement the latest educational research. http://www.bcedplan.ca/welcome.php BC’s Superintendent of Learning said in workshop that Finland is looking to BC as a model because it has good scores with a diverse population, which makes educating the public much harder.
Although BC teachers score higher internationally, they aren’t any better than the teachers I worked with in NC. The biggest difference is that the teacher’s main focus in BC is on the child. NC teachers would score just as well if they were allowed to teach to the child (as they were trained), instead of to a test.
Please keep up the good work in Canada. One day the US will wake up to the deceptions and start following your example.
Also use NC as an example of what not to do. The teachers in NC are leaving to go elsewhere and wannabe teachers are switching majors. NC will lose its educational foundation and their international test scores will plummet.