No Test Left Behind?

[4est_4est_Gump]

President Obama urged schools to cap standardized testing at 2% of classroom time. He also took responsibility for the federal government’s creation of a culture in which testing had become the “be-all and end-all” in pre-college education.

Obama and outgoing education secretary Arne Duncan plan to meet teachers and school officials in the Oval Office on Monday.

“I still have no question that we need to check at least once a year to make sure our kids are on track or identify areas where they need support,” Duncan told the New York Times.

“But I can’t tell you how many conversations I’m in with educators who are understandably stressed and concerned about an overemphasis on testing in some places and how much time testing and test prep are taking from instruction.”

Obama cannot force states or districts to limit testing. But the president has directed the Department of Education to make it easier for states to satisfy federal testing mandates. On Saturday he urged states and districts to use factors beyond testing to assess student performance.

The Obama administration said it still supported standardized tests as a necessary assessment tool.

Both House and Senate versions of an update to the George W Bush-era No Child Left Behind Act would preserve annual reading and math exams. The legislation is in limbo while negotiators in both chambers of Congress figure out how to reconcile the competing versions.

Administration officials said that in many cases testing is poorly aligned with curriculum or simply unnecessary. On Saturday they said the administration supported legislative proposals to cap testing time on a federal level, but wanted to offer states a model for how to cut down on testing, should Congress not take action.

The Guardian

WHO HATES EDUCATION NOW???

http://www.americanthinker.com/blog...mandated_common_core_tests.html#ixzz3pcdJ0mFZ

 

[Aella_]

I disagree and agree, at the same time.

On one hand, I am for frequent testing:
- If a kid gets rel. good marks (A+-/ B+- C+) on those, they then foster healthy competition and give some kids an incentive for learning. I was a narcissistic lazy bum at that age, and with the exception of literature and math, where I studied ++ because I liked them, I wouldnt've paid much attention to other subjects without the carrot or the stick.

On the other hand, I see the cons, too:
- If a kid -who's actually bright, but has problems at home and is therefore distracted- gets a few D's in a row: it might make him/her feel bad about him/herselfOn top of that, .he then gets admonished by his harsh parents or made fun of by his peers. And there you have the start of a downward spiral that leads to low self-esteem and amotivation.

______________________________________________________________________________________
The best system is the Kumon educational system (japanese - no surprise in that) where kids are given frequent tests, but these are tailored to the individual and they foster pos. self-esteem. My nephews go there once or twice a week, after school, and my sister can't stop singing their praise.

 

[Saint Peter]

The Guardian

WHO HATES EDUCATION NOW???

GUMP DOES!!!


Still.

 

[RobDownSouth]

GUMP DOES!!!


Still.

He seems to confuse "education" with "testing", doesn't he?

 

[Aella_]

On second thought (because I'm not familiar with the US educational system):

Is "standardised testing" something a bit different to what I was going on about?
For example, i I understand correctly, in the US, the sum of the grades from standardised tests are used as one of the criteria for admission into College.

 

[ms_ann_thrope]

Standardized testing points out flaws in inner city school systems and therefore is racially biased.

 

[4est_4est_Gump]

On second thought (because I'm not familiar with the US educational system):

Is "standardised testing" something a bit different to what I was going on about?
For example, i I understand correctly, in the US, the sum of the grades from standardised tests are used as one of the criteria for admission into College.

Standardized testing is exactly as Ann pointed out: a one-size fits all top-down solution to a problem we will not address because it involves the gansta rap culture...

It dumbs down the good schools and does not help the failing schools.

And if you point it out, the fucking Socialists, as you can see above, come climbing out of the woodwork to proclaim how much you hate education.

 

[Aella_]

Standardized testing is exactly as Ann pointed out: a one-size fits all top-down solution to a problem we will not address because it involves the gansta rap culture...

It dumbs down the good schools and does not help the failing schools.

And if you point it out, the fucking Socialists, as you can see above, come climbing out of the woodwork to proclaim how much you hate education.

What some of our heroic lefties fail to understand, is that sometimes these topics are chosen in order to start a debate, or just to bait them for some fun.

 

[Que]

Why should we not be suspicious of those in education that claim to have new and better ways to educate, but cannot seem to devise an acceptable (to them) way to test for what was learned and to measure and quantify their progress, if any?

How is it possible to develop educational methods but impossible to discern anything from testing that the self-same academic industrial complex devised?

If they do not want to discover any scary answers they should not be asking scary questions.

 

[Que]

I am digesting site after site of information designed not for criticism of the goals of Common Core, or identifying problems in materials being developed to help teachers meet those standards. These are shop-talk discussion amongst educators by educators, for educators, about what are the standards, how will those standards impact how they teach and will the resultant testing make it harder for them to enjoy their work ad more pointedly keep their job. As if the NEA is going to allow any testing that seems to point to a deficient teacher impact that teacher's employment. It is silly to even worry about that.

So: lets look at the predictably conflicting statements that show they have no idea.

http://education.cu-portland.edu/blog/educator-tips/four-ways-common-core-standards-will-impact-classroom-teachers/

Since teachers will need to ensure the class is meeting the required standards, the teaching techniques will change. Instead of teaching to pass standardized tests and evaluation processes, teachers will have the freedom to make changes that allow students to understand the material. The goal is to provide the appropriate lessons for the age group based on the Common Core State Standards for the subject. Teachers are able to determine the best way to keep students’ attention, teach the material and ensure the class understands the required material.

Ok, great. No standardized testing, we are all going to feel great about being creative in le classroom!

But wait:

http://teaching.about.com/od/assess/a/Common-Core-Standards.htm

Teachers (Core Subjects)
Perhaps no group will feel the pressures of the Common Core Standards greater than teachers. Many teachers will have to change their approach altogether in the classroom in order for their students to succeed on the Common Core Standards assessments. Make no mistake that these standards and the assessments that accompany them are intended to be rigorous. Teachers will have to create lessons that include higher level thinking skills and writing components in order to prepare students for the Common Core Standards. This approach is difficult to teach on a daily basis because students, particularly in this generation, are resistant to those two things.

That sure sounds like teaching to the test. Calling it an assessment doesn't make it not a test. Of course building wiggle room into the "assessments" that call for the evaluator to decide if Johnny knew how to do the math problem, even if Johnny cannot come up with the objectively, mathematically correct, singular answer will help the assessments look positive.

http://www.edutopia.org/blog/common-core-change-teaching-erin-powers

How Will They Change What Teachers Do?
CCSS will have varying degrees of influence for secondary teachers. For the areas of English language arts and mathematics, CCSS will replace current state standards. They will unify goals and expectations for students across the country as well as align assessments. For history, science, and technical subjects, the standards offer 10 areas of key literacy skills to overlay onto already existing state content standards. Because the content and assessments will be the same from state to state, a unified system of measure can be used to compare student growth from one part of the country to another. And states will be able to compete for Federal money, but that’s another topic.

It is not "another topic" it is very much the point of common core. Another way for the fox to guard the hen-house of education, keep competing online and for profit school at bay, make homeschooling more difficult since those students will not speak the new-speak of idiocy like 5+5+5 is not exactly the same thing as 3+3+3+3+3.

Individual teacher, schools and districts will do what they always do: teach to a test for which they have inside information about what, exactly, is on it and then if necessary, shunt poor performing students into sub-classifications so the don't "count" or outright fudge results in order to keep that Federal money coming.

Back to http://teaching.about.com/od/assess/a/Common-Core-Standards.htm for the LOL moment:

There will be more pressure than ever placed on teachers whose students do not perform adequately on the assessments. This could lead to many teachers being fired. The intense pressure and scrutiny that teachers will be under will create stress and teacher burnout which could lead to many good, young teachers leaving the field. There is also a chance that many veteran teachers will choose to retire rather than make the necessary changes.

LOL. NONE of that is going to happen just as none of it happened under Bush's idiotic NCLB standards. Just as under trump or Rubio's or Carsons, Or Clinton's plan nothing will happen that in any way affects the members of the NEA, one of the largest and most powerful lobbying groups in the country. Never mind the money they throw at candidates, no politician wants the teachers screaming about how he hates children.

The entire reason we are seeing these math as "process" and to be answered in essay question form with points for expressing why you got the objectively wrong answer is because the materials are getting students ready to riff on these subjects for the common core (not standardized testing!) "assessments." If you do not standardize testing, the people grading the tests get to say how ell they taught the students. 3x5=15=5x3 and has for centuries. Now they can award Johnny partial points because he wrote it down as 3+3+3+3+3 (but heaven forfend the mathematically equivalent 5+5=5). Never mind that he lost track after 3-6-9 when he ran out of fingers and concluded 11-13! The important thing is of whether Johnny knows some archaic multiplication tables, that is what calculators are for. The important thing is that Johnny regurgitated the meaningless "correct" way to solve a problem.

Teachers have all the flexibility in the world to decide how to implement use the only material they will have provided: material purchased from huge publishing conglomerates to satisfy purchasers in a handful of key states. None of the nonsense we are seeing is from the materials developed specifically with common core "assessments' in mind? Right.

NCLB was a failure because children were (as always) left behind in failing districts. No teachers were left behind. Smart kids with supportive parents will learn just fine under common core. Not because there is some magic, new method for teaching, they aren't even offering any such claim, nope, just a better, softer more administrator friendly method of evaluating who gets how much Federal money.

The hilarious thing is that it is a complete reversal of the last great idea in education, that no child should be corrected for spelling errors in a science or history class, that no child should have to form a cogent, understandable point in that history class, after all it is not English composition.

 

[Que]

Lest the crowd that is claiming non-sensical math problems and retarded solve methods have nothing to do with common core standards, how do you think those words got onto a page in a textbook?

From corestandards.org:

Common Core enables collaboration among states on a range of tools and policies, including the:

• Development of textbooks, digital media, and other teaching materials
• Development and implementation of common comprehensive assessment systems that replace existing state testing systems in order to measure student performance annually and provide teachers with specific feedback to help ensure students are on the path to success
• Development of tools and other supports to help educators and schools ensure all students are able to learn the new standards

This is all common core specific with the process being more important than the actual, objectively correct answer. Because "assesment' is the testing, same as it ever was. Same as it ever was.

 

[4est_4est_Gump]

They lost me when my daughter came home with a problem about microwaving mice...