Test Prep - The Steroids of Student Achievement
As a life-long NYS educator, the NY Times article “Warning Signs Long Ignored on New York’s School Tests” came as no surprise. I’ve been posting on the impact of NCLB-driven standardized testing for years.
While business leaders and politicians lauded the success of the corporate-inspired standards movements, teachers knew that the impressive gains in student achievement were an illusion. As the NY TImes piece reports, for the last decade, a generation of NY students has been force-fed a steady diet of test prep designed to ready them for predictable tests.
“The fast rise... of New York’s passing rates resulted from the effect of policies, decisions and missed red flags that stretched back more that 10 years ... The process involved the direct warnings from experts that went unheeded by the state and [NY] city administration that trumpeted gains in student performance... It
