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Tuesday, April 21, 2020

CURMUDGUCATION: MA: Governor Offers Terrible Reason To Re-open Schools

CURMUDGUCATION: MA: Governor Offers Terrible Reason To Re-open Schools

MA: Governor Offers Terrible Reason To Re-open Schools



Well, of all the stupid reasons to re-open schools before summer comes, this offering from Massachusetts Governor Charlie Baker has to be among the worst:

One reason Baker said he wants to see schools reopen before the end of the school year would be so students could take tests to determine how far behind they fell due to the pandemic.

Baker has been an ed reformster since he was elected in 2014, complete with ties to the charter industry and threw his own weight behind the ill-fated, dark-money-financed initiative to raise the charter cap.

So it's not exactly a shock to find him advocating for this idea, which is, I should repeat, really dumb.


This guy has a really bad idea.
The governor says he wants teachers and students to know where they stand in May so that--well, study hard over the summer, or prep form the fall, or something. It's a dumb idea.

First, you drag in a bunch of students who haven't been inside school for a weeks and weeks, try to get them re-acclimated, and then plop them down in front of a standardized test that has few-or-no stakes for them.

The test only covers a couple of subjects, and they haven't prepped for it. And when I talk about test prep, I don't mean pre-coaching the answers. That's only one kind of test prep, and a pretty rare kind at that. Test prep is about teaching students the testing language, format and techniques. For CONTINUE READING: 
CURMUDGUCATION: MA: Governor Offers Terrible Reason To Re-open Schools