>From this morning's Washington Post http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/post/when-an-adult-took-standardized-tests-forced-on-kids/2011/12/05/gIQApTDuUO_blog.html
When an adult took standardized tests forced on kids By Valerie Strauss This was written by Marion Brady, veteran teacher, administrator, curriculum designer and author. A longtime friend on the school board of one of the largest school systems in America did something that few public servants are willing to do. He took versions of his stateâs high-stakes standardized math and reading tests for 10th graders, and said heâd make his scores public. By any reasonable measure, my friend is a success. His now-grown kids are well-educated. He has a big house in a good part of town. Paid-for condo in the Caribbean. Influential friends. Lots of frequent flyer miles. Enough time of his own to give serious attention to his school board responsibilities. The margins of his electoral wins and his good relationships with administrators and teachers testify to his openness to dialogue and willingness to listen. He called me the morning he took the test to say he was sure he hadnât done well, but had to wait for the results. A couple of days ago, realizing that local school board members donât seem to be playing much of a role in the current âreformâ brouhaha, I asked him what he now thought about the tests heâd taken. âI wonât beat around the bush,â he wrote. âThe math section had 60 questions. I knew the answers to none of them, but managed to guess ten out of the 60 correctly. On the reading test, I got 62% . In our system, thatâs a âDâ, and would get me a mandatory assignment to a double block of reading instruction. He continued, âIt seems to me something is seriously wrong. I have a bachelor of science degree, two masters degrees, and 15 credit hours toward a doctorate. âI help oversee an organization with 22,000 employees and a $3 billion operations and capital budget, and am able to make sense of complex data related to those responsibilities. âI have a wide circle of friends in various professions. Since taking the test, Iâve detailed its contents as best I can to many of them, particularly the math section, which does more than its share of shoving students in our system out of school and on to the street. Not a single one of them said that the math I described was necessary in their profession.. âIt might be argued that Iâve been out of school too long, that if Iâd actually been in the 10th grade prior to taking the test, the material would have been fresh. But doesnât that miss the point? A test that can determine a studentâs future life chances should surely relate in some practical way to the requirements of life. I canât see how that could possibly be true of the test I took.â Hereâs the clincher in his post: âIf Iâd been required to take those two tests when I was a 10th grader, my life would almost certainly have been very different. Iâd have been told I wasnât âcollege material,â would probably have believed it, and looked for work appropriate for the level of ability that the test said I had. âIt makes no sense to me that a test with the potential for shaping a studentâs entire future has so little apparent relevance to adult, real-world functioning. Who decided the kind of questions and their level of difficulty? Using what criteria? To whom did they have to defend their decisions? As subject-matter specialists, how qualified were they to make general judgments about the needs of this stateâs children in a future they canât possibly predict? Who set the pass-fail âcut scoreâ? How?â âI canât escape the conclusion that decisions about the [state test] in particular and standardized tests in general are being made by individuals who lack perspective and arenât really accountable.â There you have it. In 13 words, a concise summary of whatâs wrong with present corporately driven education change: Decisions are being made by individuals who lack perspective and arenât really accountable. Those decisions are shaped not by knowledge or understanding of educating, but by ideology, politics, hubris, greed, ignorance, the conventional wisdom, and various combinations thereof. And then theyâre sold to the public by the rich and powerful. All that without so much as a pilot program to see if their simplistic, worn-out ideas work, and without a single procedure in place that imposes on them what they demand of teachers: accountability. But maybe thereâs hope. As I write, a New York Times story by Michael Winerip makes my day. The stupidity of the current test-based thrust of reform has triggered the first revolt of school principals. Winerip writes: âAs of last night, 658 principals around the state (New York) had signed a letter â 488 of them from Long Island, where the insurrection began â protesting the use of studentsâ test scores to evaluate teachersâ and principalsâ performance.â One of those school principals, Winerip says, is Bernard Kaplan. Kaplan runs one of the highest-achieving schools in the state, but is required to attend 10 training sessions. âItâs education by humiliation,â Kaplan said. âIâve never seen teachers and principals so degraded.â Carol Burris, named the 2010 Educator of the Year by the School Administrators Association of New York State, has to attend those 10 training sessions.. Katie Zahedi, another principal, said the session she attended was âtwo days of total nonsense. I have a Ph.D., Iâm in a school every day, and some consultant is supposed to be teaching me to do evaluations.â A fourth principal, Mario Fernandez, called the evaluation process a product of âludicrous, shallow thinking. Theyâre expecting a tornado to go through a junkyard and have a brand new Mercedes pop up.â My school board member-friend concluded his email with this: âI canât escape the conclusion that those of us who are expected to follow through on decisions that have been made for us are doing something ethically questionable.â Heâs wrong. What theyâre being made to do isnât ethically questionable. Itâs ethically unacceptable. Ethically reprehensible. Ethically indefensible. How many of the approximately 100,000 school principals in the U.S. would join the revolt if their ethical principles trumped their fears of retribution? Why havenât they been asked? ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~| Order the Adobe Coldfusion Anthology now! http://www.amazon.com/Adobe-Coldfusion-Anthology/dp/1430272155/?tag=houseoffusion Archive: http://www.houseoffusion.com/groups/cf-community/message.cfm/messageid:344281 Subscription: http://www.houseoffusion.com/groups/cf-community/subscribe.cfm Unsubscribe: http://www.houseoffusion.com/groups/cf-community/unsubscribe.cfm
