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Posted 2 years ago.
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In a time when colleges and universities (over 900 thus far) are making SAT scores optional or obsolete during the admissions process, why are K-12 giving them more importance? Arne Duncan and Obama are waving money in front of districts' faces to convince them to adopt more standardized testing, national standards, and national curriculum. It is CHANGE, but I believe it is the WRONG CHANGE!
Add a comment...Go Jesse Go, how can I help?
As the director of our Literacy Center, and a person who works with teachers and children every day I have seen a growing wave of apathy toward reading as a result of the increased emphasis on testing. Part of my role is to use diagnostic assessment to help develop individualized learning plans. Assessment does have it role, but the amount of testing going on today is insanity. It is dehumanizing teaching and learning. Our children are so much more than test scores. My name is Jesse Turner, and this August I am walking from Connecticut to Washington DC to protest this madness. Maybe I am crazy, but I need to do something tangible. We are also working on bringing the movie to our Literacy Center to preview with parents and teachers. If you have a moment take a look at our facebook group " Children are more than test scores"
I am walking to DC,
Jesse Turner
AdAs a student who suffers from Learning Disablilites I can easlily say that tests seldom showed what I knew. I had the pleasure of going through school during a time when LD was an unknow term. I got called lazy, stupid,.goofoff-- I wasn't living up to my potential... and of course the tests verified that. Luck for me I had a teacher who cared enough to work for years to teach me math. The reading came along finally on its own.
I hated tests.
I believe in testing for diagnostic and measurement purposes only. Otherwise, the tests are nothing more than glorified IQ tests, skewed in favor of higher SES students. When the assessment is deeply aligned with the instruction and planning, then students learn. And what nonsense are we mouthing if we pretend that schools are anything other than places of learning?
If people hate testing so much, they should get up off their behinds and do one of two things: quit in protest (and give up their paycheck, meager as it may be), or work to change the system, so that assessment takes its proper place.
As it is, we let ourselves be led around by the nose. This educational "expert" says this, that educational "expert" says that. We waffle around, repeating whatever blather some dumbo says because it sounds good. Or we jump around, pretending to be radicals, when everyone can see that a person of integrity would not do what we're doing--continuing to draw a paycheck and cheating the children, while doing absolutely nothing of substance to change this inequitable system.
As much as educational initiatives have purported to be about high-stakes testing, they're doing nothing but perpetuating the status-quo. While jobs have gone overseas, while pensions have been raided, while our benefits are being reduced (and the doctors' and insurance companies' parts are surely NOT being reduced)~~the middle class is suffering and will suffer even more in the near future.
However, the lower classes will suffer the most. While the high-stakes testing keeps them firmly in place, the American dream recedes further into the horizon, disappearing from view perhaps forever.
Meanwhile, these same bozos, waffling and jumping around, do nothing to change the status quo. They just do what they've always done, which of course, is what's being counted on.
I have been Public School Middle & High School special education teacher and administrator in New York City for 5 years and 25 years in The Bay Area, CA. It's been a wonderful career serving children and families.
The deepest struggle has been the decline, especially in the last 10 to 20 or even 30 years, to be able to insure the integrity of the students broad education.
I believe we were on a positive track, on a national level, 40 years ago with the beginnings of the Anti-Poverty programs, established with the Johnson era. THe early successes that that brought may have put some fear into the "powers" who help shape national opinion, because the slow, sometimes subtle shift did decrease educational opportunity and put the culture of fear into our society (certainly during the last 10 years) .That culture of fear takes away opportunity for all, especially our children. How could our society even accepted "No Child Left Behind" . Such a manipulation of words which practices the opposite of what the words mean. And well intended educators look at what is given and accept it ,with grumbles and try to make the best of it because there is already such a level of fear that so few have been able to say NO, NOT ON MY WATCH.
I conducted my dissertation on this and collected evidence that suggests NCLB does far more harm than good.
Standardized tests don't measure what kids (or adults, for that matter) have learned. They only measure how well the individual does on these types of exams. A project based learning assessment would be better.