A primer on corporate school reform
This is an edited version of a commentary given by Stan Karp , a teacher of English and journalism in Paterson, N.J., for 30 years. Karp spoke on Oct. 1 at the fourth annual Northwest Teachers for Justice conference in Seattle. He is now the director of the Secondary Reform Project for New Jersey’s Education Law Center and an editor of the 25-year-old Rethinking Schools magazine. A video and fuller version of the commentary can be found here.
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Why standardized tests for 2nd graders are nonsensical
There is a wacky integrity to a move by D.C. public schools officials to keep their promise to expand standardized testing, now down to second grade. The problem is that the promise didn’t make sense to begin with, education-wise or child development-wise, and still doesn’t.
My college Bill Turque reported that D.C. public school second-graders will start taking the D.C. Comprehensive Assessment System this spring. Here’s why: The D.C. school system is committed to evaluating teachers in large part on the standardized test scores of its students, so therefore, students have to take standardized tests, joining their compatriots in grades 3 through 8.
The fact that young children are known to be unreliable test takers doesn’t seem to matter.
Read full article >>My college Bill Turque reported that D.C. public school second-graders will start taking the D.C. Comprehensive Assessment System this spring. Here’s why: The D.C. school system is committed to evaluating teachers in large part on the standardized test scores of its students, so therefore, students have to take standardized tests, joining their compatriots in grades 3 through 8.
The fact that young children are known to be unreliable test takers doesn’t seem to matter.