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Thursday, February 25, 2016

Look! Something Shiny! New Improved! Test | Live Long and Prosper

Look! Something Shiny! | Live Long and Prosper:

Look! Something Shiny!

Look, it’s a shiny New Improved! Test guaranteed to distract you from the dirty, faded, ISTEP+ test that cost the state billion$ and never really worked.
The ISTEP+ is gone (or at least, it will be…soon…um, maybe), and the supermajority in the state legislature, composed almost exclusively of non-educators, will choose which standardized student achievement test to misuse next.
Hours of work, funded by taxpayer dollars, will result in the students of Indianaagain being threatened by taking a new standardized test developed to measure student achievement.
When the New Improved! Test is put in place everyone will be happy, school children will smile, (no more throwing up on test booklets!) teachers and administrators will breathe a collective sigh of relief, and “reformers” can continue working toward their goal of privatizing education in Indiana.
But there’s a blemish beneath the surface of the shiny New Improved! Test.
It will be misused, just like ISTEP+ was misused.
The New Improved! Test will immediately be misused in at least four ways.
  • It will be misused to grade the state’s K-12 schools and school corporations using a flawed A to F grading scale. Student achievement tests are developed to measure student achievement, not schools.Look! Something Shiny! | Live Long and Prosper: