This year’s English language arts tests, given April 14–16, were just as excessively long and tough as last year’s, teachers reported, leaving many angry and exasperated. Math tests did not get the same bad reviews.

“Days two and three of the ELA were horrific, developmentally inappropriate,” 3rd-grade teacher Donna Zucconi wrote on Facebook.

“I have some solid level 4 students and high level 3 students,” wrote 6th-grade teacher Terri McKee. “They could not finish any part of the ELA with enough time to check over their work. That tells me there is something fundamentally wrong with the tests.”

“I had a tear-soaked 8th-grade ELA exam,” wrote middle school teacher Philip Davies.

The three-day ELA exam was especially hard on students with disabilities and English language learners, teachers said.

“The ELA was just utterly unfair to my students,” said Brendan Peo, the special education teacher in a 4th-grade integrated co-teaching class at PS 204 in the Bronx. “It was appalling, not necessarily the questions as much as the complexity of the texts the kids were expected to read.”

Testing rules allow teachers to read only directions to students with IEPs. “My hands were tied,” Peo lamented, even as he saw his students struggling. Even the high-performing 4th-graders in the class had trouble, he said.

Peo and many other teachers reported that some reading passages on the 4th-grade tests were at a 6th-grade level or even higher, and 6th-grade tests used 8th-grade passages. “The kids were extremely discouraged by day 3,” wrote teacher Jaclyn McManus.

“If you want me to differentiate my instruction, then the exams should be differentiated,” wrote Rita Kaileh, a 5th-grade special education teacher.

Mary Cecchetti, a general education teacher in an integrated co-teaching Nest classroom for children on the autism spectrum, shared Kaileh’s view. “If we are asked to differentiate and then evaluated on differentiation and ‘multiple entry points,’ the tests should all be differentiated,” she wrote. “What a double standard. And how about the ESL children who may have had one year in a U.S. classroom?”

At her school, Cecchetti wrote, “The children are wrecks, the teachers are wrecks, and the parents just don’t know what to think.”

After two days of math testing the following week, however, Cecchetti and others said those tests seemed fair.

“I have to say in all sincerity the 4th-grade math test seemed fair, not terribly wordy, basically asking the questions that a 4th-grader should probably be able to do,” said Lorraine Cogliando, a science teacher at PS 503 in Sunset Park who proctored the math test. “But it would be hard if you didn’t have command of the language.”

Susan Love, a math teacher at PS 95 in Jamaica, said the second day of the math tests was more challenging than the first. “The tests were fair, which doesn’t mean that they were easy,” she said.

Most frustrating to teachers was not being able to see and discuss the content. Stephany Plachy, a 7th-grade ELA teacher, wrote that she coaches students to think about how they can improve their work.

“I had kids coming up to me wanting to discuss the texts, the questions and figure out whether or not they had done well,” she wrote. “It pained me not to be able to talk about it with them. What is the purpose of these tests if they don’t aid students in learning?”