Tuesday, November 1, 2011

“ACADEMICALLY WEAK STUDENTS” DON’T TEST WELL « Teachers Fight Back

“ACADEMICALLY WEAK STUDENTS” DON’T TEST WELL « Teachers Fight Back:

“ACADEMICALLY WEAK STUDENTS” DON’T TEST WELL

Months after Illinois officials closed a loophole used to keep academically weak 11th-graders from taking state exams, high school scores plummeted to the lowest level in a decade.

Why did those nasty state officials close that loophole ? Didn’t they realize that “academically weak students” don’t test well ? The various high school administrators certainly knew that.

I wonder who the “academically weak students” were ? Were they the students in special education ? The students who were chronically truant? Students on academic probation ? Limited English-speaking students?

Why did high school administrators from virtually every high school in Illinois decide not to test those students? Was it because they feared that their school’s test scores would be lowered ? Were they worried about the “academically weak students” self-esteem when those students saw their test scores?

Were the high school administrators wrong when they previously excluded the weak students from the