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Study: Standardized Tests Overwhelming Public Schools (washingtonpost.com)
An anonymous reader writes: A new study examined the amount of time U.S. public schools spend on government-mandated standardized tests, and found that the requirements are detrimental to both students and teachers. On average, students will take 112 standardized tests during their K-12 education. From grades 3-11, students spend over 20 hours per year on standardized tests alone. "It portrays a chock-a-block jumble, where tests have been layered upon tests under mandates from Congress, the U.S. Department of Education and state and local governments, many of which the study argues have questionable value to teachers and students. Testing companies that aggressively market new exams also share the blame, the study said."
The U.S. Department of Education has issued an action plan to school districts outlining ways to reduce useless tests and eliminate redundant ones. President Obama even posted a video pledging to reduce the test load of American students. "Standardized testing has caused intense debate on Capitol Hill as lawmakers work to craft a replacement for No Child Left Behind. Testing critics tried unsuccessfully to erase the federal requirement that schools test in math and reading. Civil rights advocates pushed back, arguing that tests are an important safeguard for struggling students because publicly reported test scores illuminate the achievement gap between historically underserved students and their more affluent peers."
The U.S. Department of Education has issued an action plan to school districts outlining ways to reduce useless tests and eliminate redundant ones. President Obama even posted a video pledging to reduce the test load of American students. "Standardized testing has caused intense debate on Capitol Hill as lawmakers work to craft a replacement for No Child Left Behind. Testing critics tried unsuccessfully to erase the federal requirement that schools test in math and reading. Civil rights advocates pushed back, arguing that tests are an important safeguard for struggling students because publicly reported test scores illuminate the achievement gap between historically underserved students and their more affluent peers."
The whole problem with standardized testing is that there is nothing useful that can feasibly be done with the results.
Use the results to fire the poorest-performing teachers? Nope, the unions won't allow it.
Use the results to change school funding formulas? Nope, the politicians won't allow it.
Use the results to decide which schools to turn over to for-profit companies to run? Nope, those deals are made behind closed doors.
112 standardized tests, and the only thing we can ever do with them is to wring our hands over how poor the results are.
that would be the 10th amendment
the most ignored amendment by the feds
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
The top 1% don't need help to pay for private school - they pay their over-sized school tax bill (based on their over-sized home) AND $5,000-$60,000/yr tuition every year.
Vouchers will get students out of failing public schools, like, Newark, Chicago, etc. and give them a chance to break the cycle of poverty. Public schools and tenure are geared towards rewarding incompetent teachers... The teacher's unions always put the needs of the teachers ahead of the needs of the students - every time. For proof you need look no further than the last contract negotiations in Chicago Public Schools, where teachers demanded raises despite pitiful student learning.
Ken
Hell, half the time the Feds are the only ones I kinda trust in the in the Education game.
Oh, I completely agree with you that the Constitution doesn't say anything about the Federal government doing anything with education.
However, to me it feels like, if they were left to their own devices, half the counties in the US would be teaching creationism to the male, Caucasian, Protestant children of landholders, and telling everyone else to go pound sand. And another third would be too poor to teach their kids anything. I feel like the Feds, as bureaucratic and glacial as they are, are the only things keeping education sane in many of our communities.
I would agree that, yes, we _could_ let the free market take care of the issue: if people want to give their children a sub-standard education, they will be less competitive in the national and global markets, and they will be competed out of viability within a few generations. But I would imagine that the competitive process would result in a lot of suffering and economic "readjustment" in the community, stuff that I'm going to be on the hook for as a tax payer. Either now, to make them give their children an appropriate education, or later, to cover their unemployment claims and economic restructuring costs.
Yes, at the end of it, a lot of this comes down to the progressive "I know better than you how you need to do your things", but how do you stand by when someone is fouling it up so bad. And in a way that could be compared to child abuse.
School vouchers are a scam to keep the prisons full. If you hear someone talk about "school reform", run for the hills. They're famous flim-flammers.
The school "privatization" movement is one of the biggest scandals of the 21st century. Charter schools fail. They exist to funnel money upward, not to educate kids.
http://www.salon.com/2014/02/1...
http://www.philly.com/philly/b...
http://www.eschatonblog.com/20...
You are welcome on my lawn.
Exactly what do you expect the teachers to do when there are calls to make them more "accountable" and to link their pay to test scores? When schools are judged on their test score results? Your argument is naive and unrealistic.
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
There shouldn't be any 'prepping'
If they're teaching to the test, it's corruption and fraud. They shouldn't know what's on it, and they sign agreements not to open/look at the tests in advance.
It's pretty obvious you don't understand how pervasive the test material stuff has "infected" everyday teaching in many states.
You're talking about a different phenomenon of actual cheating on tests where teachers give students answers (or something close to it). That's not the kind of preparation that goes on in most classrooms.
In many states, the standardized tests are derived from state-approved "standards" that spell out specific exercise types which are likely to occur (particularly in basic subjects like math and reading). Teachers who have any experience with these tests over the years notice certain patterns of the types of questions that always show up. (This isn't just for normal "standardized testing" -- it goes for AP tests and such as well. When I taught AP physics, there were all sorts of "lore" passed down among AP teachers because all the previous tests were available, so you knew there was likely to be a question dealing with X, a question on topic Y would probably take a certain form, etc.)
For decades in states that have had "high-stakes" standardized testing, it has been common to have extra review sessions for students going over these clear patterns in testing, and generally to spend at least 1-2 weeks before the tests reviewing this stuff in class as well. When I taught high school math quite a few years ago in one of these "high-stakes" states (which had such testing even before No Child Left Behind), our district paid teachers extra to do evening review sessions going over such stuff.
For example, a disproportionate number (95%+) of math problems involving right triangles would involve either (1) the Pythagorean triple 3,4,5 or its multiples, or (2) the triple 5,12,13. (It's possible that 8,15,17 could show up too maybe... but I think it was just the first two which were common.)
Anyhow, so we'd tell students if they saw a problem with a right triangle, either to expect 5,12,13 or if they saw other numbers to check to see if it was a multiple of 3,4,5.
Of course, this is ridiculous and antithetical to "deep knowledge" of how triangles or even the basic Pythagorean theorem works, but this is the kind of crap that would show up on tests. And teachers were strongly urged to teach these known patterns because administrators were usually under pressure to maintain certain levels of passing scores on these tests.
It's gotten much, much worse in the past decade or so -- some states have alliances between the standardized test designers and textbook publishers, so textbooks come with practice tests bundled directly into the textbook.
I've seen this with some kids of my friends or other family members -- it would not be an exaggeration to say that some of them spend 20%+ of all classtime doing standardized tests, practice tests, or direct prep for such tests (e.g., worksheets designed around known test prep patterns), particularly in core areas like math and English/reading. Many schools adopt "benchmark" schemes with these practice tests to check whether students are "on track" at various points of the year leading up to the actual tests.
THAT'S what GP was presumably referring to as "test prep" and that's what people usually mean when they talk about class time being monopolized by "teaching to the test." They do NOT generally refer to illegal cheating scandals, but rather the amount that class activities and exercises are tailored to whatever stupid patterns tend to show up on these tests... and that can be much, much more significant than the couple percent or whatever of class time literally spent on taking the tests.
a kid growing up in manhatten doesnt need to know things like hunting where a kid in the adirondacks would get much more from learning how to hunt than say...spanish
thats just one example
Elementary schools teach neither hunting nor Spanish, so that is a pretty dumb example. Why would something like math, or reading, need to be taught differently in Manhattan vs the Adirondacks?
The "point" of having separate states in the U.S. was not remotely to provide different choices for where people could live. The "point" was that the various state leaders were simply going to refuse to join any union that didn't mostly keep their existing little fiefdoms -- most notably in the case of the slave-owning states. For an excellent read on how the sausage was made, consider Robertson's "The Original Compromise: What the Constitution's Framers Were Really Thinking".
http://www.amazon.com/Original-Compromise-Constitutions-Framers-Thinking/dp/0199796297/
The ability of lower-class people to move between states is relatively very limited, and fraught with risk (like leaving behind existing family and community support structures).
We know where leadership by an anti-intellectual "strongman" who scapegoats minorities and likes boisterous rallies goes
The needs of the teacher leads to the needs of the student. Not the other way around.
No, the needs of the profession lead to the needs of the student. The profession needs to attract competent teachers and ensure that incompetent ones are removed. It needs to ensure that academic standards are high and that there are adequate resources.
The needs of teachers are that they remain employed with the highest salary and best benefits they can get. There is some overlap between the two sets of needs but they are not the same. Worse even the needs of the teachers are not the top priority for the unions the needs of the union are./