Obama Fails on Testing
Barack Obama is a pretty smart guy, so it is amazing that even his efforts to compromise on high-stakes standardized testing are so far off. On testing he keeps failing the test.
After six years of pushing high-stakes testing as part of his Race to the Top education initiative, Obama decided there is now too much testing in American schools. This decision is a response to intense push back by parents and teachers against the testing regime.
It seems that the average student in some United States big-city schools now takes over 100 hundred hours of mandatory standardized tests during their school career. Eighth grade students are the most tested. They sit through between 20 and 25 hours of standardized tests, which makes up about 2.3% of school time. The Obama Administration proposed that Congress cap standardized testing at 2% of instruction time when it votes on reauthorizing federal legislation governing elementary and secondary schools.
Why 2% test time? How did this become the magic number? Nobody knows. Must have been the algorithm.
But wait kids before you celebrate. First, the highly partisan divided Congress has not been so good at passing anything. Second, the Obama proposal does not mean students will not have to take traditional teacher-made, school, and district tests which somehow did not figure into their hourly calculations.
In addition, Arne Duncan, lame-duck Education Secretary made it clear that the Obama Fails on Testing | Alan Singer:
