Three Cheers for Three Days of Testing Boycotts By British Teachers
The British love their traditions, but this Spring's naming and shaming ritual based on standardized test scores has finally been interrupted. The infamous "league tables" are being thrown into disarray, and if Brits want to know this year how to avoid schools with the poorest students, they will have to drive around the neighborhoods, rather than flipping through the handy league tables that classify schools based on test scores that reflect, as Alfie Kohn once quipped, the size of the houses in the neighborhoods, rather than the quality of the instruction or curriculum. I say, three cheers ole' boy, for the moral courage of British teachers. From the Telegraph:
Pupils across England are taking alternative exams instead of being entered for government-backed Sats tests for 10 and 11-year-olds.
Senior teachers said it would enable schools to judge pupils’ progress while ensuring results could not be checked against targets or used to publish league tables.
The disclosure came on the first day of a week-long boycott of Sats.
Up to 300,000 children were prevented from sitting an official reading exam on Monday, with tests in spelling, writing and mathematics being targeted later this week.
The action is being led by the National Union of Teachers and the National Association of Head