None of the characteristics that are important for thriving in the world of the twenty-first century are encouraged by standardized testing, argues Diane Ravitch, one of the most respected educational historians in the world. What we need is a generation of students who can think critically and creatively.
Diane Ravitch: The rise of the testing movement can be traced through the twentieth century. But what we’re living now with is not just the rise of the testing movement but the overwhelming dominance of testing. It has become almost like the monster that ate American education. And we are so test-obsessed that schools are being closed based on test scores, even when those test scores reflect that the schools have a heavy enrollment of very poor kids or heavy enrollment of children with disabilities and children with all kinds of other needs. We don't look at the needs. We don't evaluate the problems that need to be solved in that school. We just say "These are low scores. We have to close the school."
I am very deeply concerned about what years and years of standardized testing does to
ORANGE COUNTY, Fla. —
Central Florida school officials are concerned about a bill that would redistribute funds for traditional schools.
WFTV learned millions of dollars are being proposed for charter schools.
The Central Florida school districts that stand to lose the most are Orange and Polk Counties at $4.4 million each. Lake County is expected to lose $3 million.
WFTV learned that if SB-1852 becomes a law, 20 percent of the money used to maintain traditional school buildings in Central Florida would instead go to privately run charter schools
No time for a full treatment of this right now, but can I just point out something?
There wasn’t a Superbowl riot at U Mass last night.
The AP story on last night’s events on campus says there were no hospitalizations, and no property damage. A university spokesperson says there were a few fistfights, but all thirteen of the student arrests were for either disorderly conduct or failure to disperse.
Why the “failure to disperse” arrests? Because fifteen minutes after students gathered in a main residential quad on campus, police told them to go home. They used horses, dogs, and smokebombs, cops to clear the area, and busted folks who wouldn’t leave.
This wasn’t a riot, it was a street party, and from everything I’ve seen the big drama all
My phone rings yesterday afternoon.
“Fred Klonsky?”
Who is calling?
“I’m calling on behalf of the Democratic Senatorial Election Committee…”
What?
“The Democrats are all up for re-election and…”
No they’re
This is the Bill Digest description for Senate Bill 6482:
Assesses a two percent marginal tax on annual income exceeding one million dollars.
Establishes a new state trust fund dedicated to meeting the paramount duty for the education of all children.
Requires only taxpayers with adjusted gross income of one million dollars or more to file a tax return with the department of revenue.
This bill taxes adjusted gross income of above one million dollars at a rate of 2%. In other words, no income below 1 million dollars would be subject to the tax at all, if your adjusted gross income is $1,001,000 you would pay 2% of $1,000 into the education trust. The money in the education trust could only be used for education,
• HB 1191 Parent Empowerment in Education (aka Parent Trigger) passed the House Rulemaking and Regulation Committee by a vote of 8 to 6 — ALMOST along party lines. The committee heard and passed the “delete everything” (aka strike-all) amendment. There are significant problems with this version.
The bill in its current form would:
- Allow parents to petition the school district requesting the implementation of a parent-selected turnaround option when a school does not sufficiently improve in the initial year of implementing a district-selected turnaround option.
- Prohibit districts from assigning a student to a teacher with an annual performance evaluation rating of unsatisfactory or needs improvement in consecutive school years regardless of reason
- Authorize a parent to request the performance evaluation of any classroom teacher assigned to his/her child
A new report, commissioned by the District of Columbia Mayor Vincent Gray and conducted by the Chicago-based real estate consulting firm IFF, was supposed to provide guidance on how the District might act and invest strategically in school improvement, including optimizing the distribution of students across schools, many of which are either over- or under-enrolled.
Needless to say, this is a monumental task. Not only does it entail the identification of high- and low-performing schools, but plans for improving them as well. Even the most rigorous efforts to achieve these goals, especially in a large city like D.C., would be to some degree speculative and error-prone.
This is not a rigorous effort. IFF’s final report is polished and attractive, with lovely maps and color-coded tables presenting a lot of summary statistics. But there’s no emperor underneath those clothes. The report’s data an
Pedro Noguera, a trustee of the State University of New York, resigned late last month, citing concerns that SUNY and its Charter Schools Institute, which authorizes charters in New York, has a political agenda to increase the number of charters, rather than a mission to develop experimental schools. SchoolBook invited Mr. Noguera to explain his decision. Here is his open letter.
For four years, I was appointed to serve as a member of the State University of New York (SUNY) Board of Trustees by Gov. David A. Paterson.
Not long after being appointed I was asked by the chairman, Carl Hayden, to serve as the chairman of the committee that oversaw the authorization of charter schools.
I knew that this would be a controversial position but I agreed to serve because I supported the original idea behind the creation of charter schools: that they could serve as educational sites where innovative practices
In the news on Monday, Michael Winerip’s On Education column in The New York Times will have you, as he writes, “Be a turnover in his Grave.”
The reference is to how an answer may have earned 1 of 2 possible points on the Jan. 24 New York State English Regents exam. Mr. Winerip said the exam and the scoring was easier than ever, raising questions about how effective school officials have been at raising standards in the schools.
The column says that this year, “for the first time, high schools students must score at least 65 on the English exam, as well as on four other state tests — math, science, global history and United States history — to earn a diploma.”
But how the state advises teachers to grade the students’ responses to the essays and short-answer questions
To close the achievement gap between poor and affluent students in Tennessee, some students may need to learn at double the rate of their high-performing peers, according to Tennessee Department of Education materials.
But this goal could create a potential Catch-22 for teachers, who for the first time this year will be measured—and rated—on whether all of their students make large gains on standardized tests, as determined by the controversial statistical formula known among researchers as “value-added modeling.”
Millington Middle School teacher Kay Obenchain walks through her 7th grade enriched math class to check on students as they review for testing. Obenchain has been teaching full-time at the school for 8 years. (Mike Brown/The Commercial Appeal)
