When Test Scores Are Meaningless Why Subject Your Child to the Test? Missouri Education Watchdog

When Test Scores Are Meaningless Why Subject Your Child to the Test? It’s the “Why are Fire Trucks Red” Illustration. – Missouri Education Watchdog:

When Test Scores Are Meaningless Why Subject Your Child to the Test? It’s the “Why are Fire Trucks Red” Illustration.

 Common sense and the rule of law long ago flew out the window when the Common Core State Standards Initiative was adopted before the standards were written and implemented in school districts without the knowledge of the taxpayers who paying were for these mandates.  The transformation of public education has been set to morph speed toward a centralization of learning, teaching and assessing for the sake of equity.  Increased academic excellence is not a goal of the Initiative.  Measuring academic assessments to determine increased equity on unvalidated assessments is the data dream of the reformers.  It doesn’t matter that the data is based on unvalidated assessments/research, it’s a financial bonanza for data mining companies/repositories and third party researchers.   It’s job security for local, state and federal bureaucrats compelled to gather the data under the threat of withholding of funding to continue meaningless data.

Not only do the data miners/bureaucrats gather meaningless data, if that data can be construed as problematic for the bureaucrats, then enact a law withholding poor results to minimize dissatisfaction and questions on why the test results are so dismal.  This data gathering of meaningless information and withholding of this data if it doesn’t fit into preconceived talking points is apparent in the latest published (or not) test results  coming from from Indiana.  From Only a small share of Indiana schools earned higher A-F grades in 2015 (updated):

…when the Indiana State Board of Education released grades for the 2014-15 school year this morning, it seemed clear that many schools benefitted from a “hold harmless” bill that Gov. Mike Pence signed into law Thursday. That law, prompted by tougher standards that triggered a dramatic drop in 2015 ISTEP test scores, barred the board from giving schools grades for 2015 that were lower than the ones they received the year before.

With that law in place, the grades released by the board today reflected new grades for a fraction of Indiana schools that took last year’s test. Since most schools’ test scores dropped between 2014 and 2015, just 120 of more than 2,000 schools that took ISTEP saw their When Test Scores Are Meaningless Why Subject Your Child to the Test? It’s the “Why are Fire Trucks Red” Illustration. – Missouri Education Watchdog: