Sunday, August 5, 2012

An Urban Teacher's Education: SOS Conference 2012, Day Three

An Urban Teacher's Education: SOS Conference 2012, Day Three:


SOS Conference 2012, Day Three

Rose Sanders speaks
Over and over again, in the session and throughout the conference, participants railed against high-stakes testing as the illusion on which corporate reform is standing. I felt this to be the area in which we had largest consensus. As Tim Slekar put it (to paraphrase), "This is a hill to die on. Don't accept test scores as valid indicators of student learning, teaching quality or school quality. Not even a little bit. There's not one shred of evidence they tell us anything except for what zip code they come from and who their parents are."

It was during this session I realized the term "high-stakes testing" is really an oxymoron in a way. If it's high-