CURMUDGUCATION: Why Do the Feds Heart Testing?

CURMUDGUCATION: Why Do the Feds Heart Testing?:

Why Do the Feds Heart Testing?

It has been a fact of educational life for so long, that we don't take the question out and ask it much any more, but really--

Why is there a federal requirement to give students a standardized test?

Why has that provision, that requirement, that burden been given the weight of federal regulation? Even as ESSA tore down and ripped up many pieces of federal oversight and regulation, that provision was never in doubt. At best, for a while, there was hope that the testing requirement would be reduced, but nobody ever thought that the federal requirement to make give students a standardized test would go away. And it didn't.

But why? Why does the federal government believe that an important national interest is served by testing every American school student, year after year?

There's no federal requirement that every automobile be inspected year after year. There's no federal requirement to even register firearms, let alone make sure they're still working properly. Federal requirements for food are loose and getting looser, with the FDA limited in how much inspecting they can get done and what they can do about the results. There's no annual federal testing requirement for soldiers and armaments, no federal requirement for annual testing of road surfaces, no federal requirement for annual testing of judges or legislators-- you get the idea. There's a big long list of things that are important for the welfare and safety of the country, a long list of things that taxpayers spend big money on, and yet do not operate under a federal demand for constant testing.

On top of that, once the federally required tests have been given-- what will the feds do with the 


FL: Stamping Out Science?

Florida remains an important reminder that as much as I love the idea of local control, it can a powerful instrument for educational malpractice.

Yes, the state has managed to fumble everything from their Big Standardized Test crash-and-burn to making Florida a petri dish for growing some of the most odious reformster groups around (and all of that educational baloney just to help launch Jeb! into the biggest national campaign fizzle since New Coke). They let Bill Gates play with (and crash) a whole school district. But Florida has also allowed local school boards the freedom to make baldly racist assaults on their own school system.Pinellas County schools resegregated their elementary schools and cut off proper funding and support to the poor black ones.

Now some right-wing Common Core opponents are backing proposed laws that would give local taxpayers a tactical nuke to use on their school districts.

House Bill 899 and Senate Bill 1018 are aimed at the book-buying procedure in Florida. Florida Citizens' Alliance is one of the groups backing this measure; on their web page you can find a call to action for both these actions (billed as anti-Common Core legislation) and open carry and campus carry bills.

They would like to see a change in how textbooks are selected. The bill calls for a committee chosen by the local school board, containing at least one third parents, following public meeting FL: Stamping Out Science?