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Wednesday, August 5, 2015

Superintendent Scarice addresses the powerful and ugly truth about SBAC testing charade - Wait What?

Superintendent Scarice addresses the powerful and ugly truth about SBAC testing charade - Wait What?:
Superintendent Scarice addresses the powerful and ugly truth about SBAC testing charade


With Connecticut’s State Department of Education refusing to release the results of the 2015 Common Core Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium (SBAC) in a timely manner – other states released their state wide results at least six weeks ago – Madison, Connecticut Superintendent Thomas Scarice speaks the truth about the unfair, inappropriate and discriminatory SBAC testing scam.
Scarice is widely recognized as a leader in the effort to provide parents with accurate information about their rights when it comes to opting out their children from the SBAC testing scheme and 86 percent high school juniors in Madison did not take the test design that was purposely defined to label them failures.
In his latest commentary piece, Scarice addresses the most fundamental failure of all when it comes to the SBAC test.
You can find and comment on Superintendent Scarcie’s MUST READ piece on the CTMirror at: SBAC: Data but no meaning, when meaning matters most
Madison Superintendent Thomas Scarice writes;
I can still feel the slap of his small leather batting glove in the palm of my hand as he rounded first base.  By the time he reached home plate, occasionally touching the ground in route, my 8-year-old son, Owen, and I shared a moment that cannot truly be captured by words, and by no means, captured by numbers.
Owen hit a grand slam …over the fence… in a baseball tournament watched by a generous crowd of his closest friends and teammates.  A volcanic eruption of joy.  An eternal moment between a father and son.  The slap of our hands in mid-flight, a celebration marked by a selfless love that can only be felt by a parent.
Although we possess a breathtaking picture, a moment frozen in time, the depth of pride and mutual excitement can never be held or touched, nor could it ever be quantified.
A boy clutching his dad.  A boundless, timeless, indescribable bond.
Moments like this define us in profound ways, big and small.  Their meaning deepens as a result of context.  It deepens as a result of the story behind the moment. Viewed in isolation, with a faceless boy and faceless adult, this moment loses all of its meaning.  In a sense, this moment can be dehumanized with numbers and symbols replacing the faces and stories, with callous 
Superintendent Scarice addresses the powerful and ugly truth about SBAC testing charade - Wait What?: