Beware the Corporate Media Spin on the Obama Adminstration's Change of Course on Standardized Testing
On October 24, 2015 the Obama administration announced a shift of its education policy when it announced a change in the Department of Education’s position on standardized testing. As reported by Kate Zernike in The New York Times,
“Specifically, the administration called for a cap on assessment so that no child would spend more than 2 percent of classroom instruction time taking tests. It called on Congress to “reduce over-testing” as it reauthorizes the federal legislation governing the nation’s public elementary and secondary schools.”
2% of classroom instruction is 20 hours of testing annually.
This is being promoted in the corporate media as a dramatic shift in the Obama administrations support for standardized testing. It should be greeted with a high degree of skepticism and caution, however. The over two-decade siege on public education codified into education policy by No Child Left Behind followed by Race to the Top is not going to suddenly be scaled down in one day. There are too many corporate interests such as Pearson and the Gates Foundation, which have made standardized testing the center of their method of privatizing public education, for the corporate agenda to be given up.
According to The New York Times article, the change in policy was prompted by a new survey from the Council of Great City Schools. The Council is made up of 68 large school districts with enrollment of over 35,000 students.
In its press release, Student Assessments in Public Schools Not Strategic, Often Redundant, The Council says,
“The average student in America’s big-city public schools will take roughly 112 mandatory standardized tests between pre-kindergarten and high school graduation, a new study shows.
The average of roughly eight standardized tests per year consumes between 20 and 25 hours each school year and Schools Matter: Beware the Corporate Media Spin on the Obama Adminstration's Change of Course on Standardized Testing:
