Post by W.T.Faulkner on Apr 1, 2014 14:45:38 GMT -5
I didn't read all the replies, but i wish more of my students and parents would opt-out. In urban ed, those standardized test scores can and have closed the doors of schools that were serving high proportions of students with disabilities and students who had experienced trauma.
Where I work, teachers and schools are far more impacted than students by standardized test grades.
I'm not projecting and speckleds comment came off kind of assey. Also, I honestly don't care what topics you post in here at this point toledo! Seriously. Have at it!
I don't really understand why politicians are making any sort of educational decisions. What makes them qualified to tell how to properly assess students?
i don't see the big deal. (ftr - no idea what standardized testing is like here, so not even sure if i am affected and to what extent).
i mean, it's school. you learn, you get tested on what you learned.
i can see why teachers want to opt out, but i guess i don't get why parents are in an uproar. this is like the educational equivalent to people diagnosing themselves on the google. just butt out and let people do their jobs. or homeschool if you don't like it.
I am no expert by any means, but I disagree here - spending a tremendous amount of time and energy taking these type of tests which have a tendency to be a test of who can memorize stuff best, doesn't seem terribly helpful in actually TEACHING kids anything. I think some testing is good, mainly for practice for the important tests to come, but all the testing seems excessive to me..... as does the amount of homework kids seem to be getting these days. It seems counter productive to spend so much time focused on getting good test results over and over again rather than focussing on expanding knowledge and fostering a love of learning.
Agreed. My fear is a generation of children who hate learning...because to them learning only entails earning a certain score on a test. It frightens me really...
I think this plays into the pussification of America. "if precious doesn't do well, he/she will be "LABELED." I'm pulling my child out! This is too stressful!
WTF? Take the damn test.
I am not reading all the replies so this may have been covered, but you are misunderstanding the opt out movement. It has nothing to do with Suzy Preshysangel being too delicate for the test or its results. It is civil disobedience.
There is a veritable of frenzy of testing right now under the guise of improving education. What it all real does, though, is measure and punish. It has been used to pull funding from schools. It has been used to close schools. It has been used to rank teachers on scores for kids they did not even teach (see: value-added measurement). It has been used to publish teachers' names in the newspaper. It has been used to discredit public schooling in general.
The local high school district is up to 4 weeks of testing in 9th grade now. 4 weeks of assessments to comply with state law about teacher evaluation. None of those tests are unitntests; I didn't even include those. And now the state is going to add PARCC to the mix which will add an additional 15 hours of testing. There are so many assessments that they literally will not be able to have final exams in the high schools if PARCC is added.
My own son is a kindergartner. His school already implemented Common Core. His teacher estimates that they have 8 weeks of assessment thru the year.
The 3rd grade writing tests in some states are 3 hour long persuasive writing tests synthesizing multiple sources.
Are you in NY? I thought you were.... NY had a rollout test for Common Core last year. The directions alone were 30 minutes. Children vomited and broke down during the test. The test included corporate placements for Nike and a few others. And it included standards assigned to higher grades in the lower grades' tests (such as recognizing irony). It also had reading passages miscalibrated and thus assigned to lower grades that should have been on higher grades. The high school lexile range of the parts of the PARCC test exceeds 2000 as the target comprehension level. To give you an idea, Hamlet is around the 1400 Lexile, and the average college textbook is also around a 1400. But high school juniors' target is >2000.
People aren't opting out to withhold the pain of a test. They are doing so to protest the misuse of tests and the waste of time and resources that this culture of testing represents. They are doing so because they like the schools and want to stand with the teachers who will be punished for these scores. And because they know their kids are not a data point and don't believe this testing addresses the real problems that plague students. They are trying to change the system and politics and legislation, prevent corporations from owning schools and curricula, not protect Nancy Sue's fragilility.
I don't get it. bab took umbrage with people misunderstanding her OP and telling her that she was wrong about the reasons the people who she knows personally were skipping tests for their kids--reasons they shared with her. Not about general post meandering. Right? Don't we all get annoyed in such situations?
I don't really understand why politicians are making any sort of educational decisions. What makes them qualified to tell how to properly assess students?
In fairness, politicians do the same thing with medicine, science....well basically they are mostly unqualified to comment on anything they legislate.
I don't get it. bab took umbrage with people misunderstanding her OP and telling her that she was wrong about the reasons the people who she knows personally were skipping tests for their kids--reasons they shared with her. Not about general post meandering. Right? Don't we all get annoyed in such situations?
I'm pretty sure toledo has decided this is not allowed.
I don't really understand why politicians are making any sort of educational decisions. What makes them qualified to tell how to properly assess students?
In fairness, politicians do the same thing with medicine, science....well basically they are mostly unqualified to comment on anything they legislate.
I think this is why it's actually it can feel so amazing to watch Elizabeth Warren when she goes on a tear .... she actually knows what the fuck she's talking about when she's talking finances because, you know, that's what she was educated in. We are so unaccustomed to our politicians actually having a clue what they're talking about, that it stands out when someone does. They're legislating things they don't understand or even care to understand. I was reading this earlier about how 17 of the 22 involved in the committee that deals with climate change either don't believe it exists or don't believe humans have anything to do with it. So, yeah, they don't discriminate when it comes to things they legislate, but have no real knowledge of.
I want to know more about the gates foundation.!!!
what would you like to know?
It has spent around 200 million on Common Core. It paid the Council of Chief State School Offiers and the National Governors' Association, the main organizations at the heart of Common Core, millions in this decade. It also paid off the NEA (the largest union) a few million dollars in exchange for endorsing Common Core. It partnered with Pearson (who stands to gain pretty much the most from Common Core). And it funds ANY organization that "competes" with public school teachers including TFA and charter schools (failed) and groups of teachers that will fight their own unions. Gates ison the record as saying test scores are the only real way to measure teachers, better than observations even. The goal is to privatize education entirely and have a nice, tidy little market.
To give you an idea, Hamlet is around the 1400 Lexile, and the average college textbook is also around a 1400. But high school juniors' target is >2000.
Another reference point for those unfamiliar with Lexiles, the Lexile range on the ACT/SAT is about 1500. The target lexile for a high school Junior/Senior is about 1200 give or take. If you're reading something with a Lexile at your range, you will understand approximately 75% of it without assistance. When you read something 200 pts and above your Lexile, your understanding drops to 50% without assistance and so on.