http://news.yahoo.com/apnewsbreak-official-10-states-ed-waiver-110202341.html





Considering that my nephew in 10th grade now, living near Princeton, NJ spends one class period a day on learning to take the standardized tests that are part of the misguided NCLB legislation, I call this a good thing.

 

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That awful law and many like it need to be shitcanned.

Yes, but freeing 1/5th of the states from it is a pretty shitty way to do business. Meanwhile the other 80% of us will slog through with the same ridiculous cookie-cutter requirements.

 

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Did you read the article?

The states getting it waived have made their own plans and committed to implementing them, that will meet the requirements of NCLB.

NCLB is hamfisted and clumsy AT BEST, as is almost any other sort of program of its kind that is foisted on 350 million people. The states in question have taken presumably proactive steps to provide for the tenets of NCLB - writing and math competency for example - without a lot of the arduous crap NCLB brings.

 

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Hatred of standardized testing is funny. Poet comes here and rails about it sometimes. He says that it gets teachers to "teach to the test" which he says is a bad thing. He says he refuses to do it and "teaches the right way." He says that his students do the best on the test anyways.

Somehow it escapes him that his story proves that "teaching the right way" is in fact "teaching to the test."

 

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I think your perception of this is a bit askew. The test isn't really useful except in the case of really bad demographics and/or school districts (I'm intentionally avoiding the discussion of what makes a district or demographic "bad" because I don't want to waylay the discussion). The test is about mathematics and writing/reading competency. Those skills should be sort of already in hand by the time kids get out of grammar school and students should be on to learning critical thinking and applications of skills like math, reading, and writing rather than still learning basic add/subtract/multiply/divide and about nouns, pronouns, verbs, adverbs, prepositions.

What illustrates reading and writing better than having class discussion of books and/or writing papers/reports on reading assignments? What illustrates mathematic competency better than doing exercises APPLYING those skills rather than simply drilling on the basics that are on the test?

When I was in school after about 8th grade, our curriculum was about applying our skills, not about simply learning them. With the whole "teach to the test" concept, there's no time or room for doing exercises applying those skills, it's just constant drill and repetition, and while it may being UP some lower performing demographics/districts, it holds back other demographics/districts.

In short, if schools were functioning properly*, the current standardized tests would be a joke and would require no other preparation than the usual progression through the curriculum.


*I understand that this is not JUST about schools, it's about teachers, students, parents, administration, and government all working together, but that's a huge other discussion too, just like why some demographics and/or districts can't meet these basic NCLB requirements.

 

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I've always said that the key to standardized testing is making a good test that evaluates the right things. If everything you want kids to learn is on the test, then the teachers damn well better be teaching to the test. If there are things you want kids to learn that aren't on the test, then you just need to improve the test.




Poet doesn't do the drill and repetition thing. He "teaches the right way" and his kids do the best on the tests.

If teachers are doing the drill and repetition thing it's because they are lazy, not because they are trying to get the kids to do the best on the test.

 

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You are confusing what is meant by "teaching to the test". It's a simple semantics argument you want to have and I understand that, but hanging your argument on semantics doesn't make you a contrarian, it just makes you tedious.


When people talk about "teaching to the test" they mean that 10th graders are sitting around doing exercises like "pick out all the nouns in this list of words" and "underline the verb in the following sentences".


In many (not all, but many) cases the teachers that are "teaching to the test" are doing so because their administration is forcing them to do so either directly or indirectly. It's a copout all around and it is forced down from the federal government, which makes the result that we are seeing today a foregone and very much predictable (and thoroughly predictED) outcome - which is why NCLB is so godawful fkn terrible.

 

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Actually you're the one stuck on semantics. My argument is two things:

1) Teaching the way you say standardized testing pushes teachers to teach gives inferior results (on tests) compared to teaching the right way. Therefore it is not the tests that are driving teachers and administrators to do things the lazy way.

2) Whatever you want kids to know, put it on the test. If you feel the tests are causing curriculums to shrink, then expand the test.

See, no semantics in my argument.

 

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Trust me, EVERY state has their own plans for tracking student performance and graduation requirements. There's not a state education department out there that couldn't submit a summary of state educational milestones, goals and requirements over time. Hopefully these 10 are just the first round of approvals.

 

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