What’s wrong with standardized testing…this month? Parents United for Responsible Education

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What’s wrong with standardized testing…this month?

I’m talking with Dick Kay on WCPT this afternoon about standardized testing.

Tune in to 820 AM, or 92.5 FM (west side of Chicago) 92.7 FM (north) or 99.9 FM (south). Apparently you can also live stream the show here:

Here are some of the topics I hope we’ll be able to cover:

Testing fake facts? There’s a new, racist version of the fake test facts scandal that PURE broke last year, when we exposed a Scantron reading question that was obvious, and falsified, propaganda for charter schools.

The reading passage for that question included this statement: “Multimillionaire Charles Mendel sends his children to a charter school because he believes that that charter schools deliver the highest quality education.” Problem is, there is no such person. Other “facts” in the passage about charter schools were also false.

This month, CPS students have been taking REACH performance exams, which are standardized tests used to measure teacher effectiveness. Students were given REACH pre-tests in the fall, and their “progress” – and part of their teachers’ evaluations – will be determined by the results from these spring tests.

REACH tests are supposedly written by teams of CPS teachers. I say supposedly, because it is hard to imagine that any of our teachers had a hand in the poisonous, idiotic test that showed up on the REACH web site for spring administration.

The test asks students to respond to two commentaries on immigration, both rabidly anti-immigrant and both written by “authorities” who don’t exist. Students are asked, among other things, to decide who is the more “authoritative” of the two fake pundits.

CPS has pulled the test off the site, but still allows the test to be used. They have attempted to excuse the bias by explaining that last fall’s “pre-test” consisted of two pro-immigration essays, so this was a “balance.” OK. Sure.

Keeping in mind that “progress” is determined by the change in student performance from the fall to the spring test and that a large percentage of CPS students are immigrants or children of

- See more at: http://pureparents.org/?p=21309#sthash.WIkXVvRo.dpuf