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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 federal definition of a full school year is 185 days...
20 hours is still less than 2%, apparently the TESTING isn't the issue, it's that teachers want to spend a full week 'preparing' their students for the tests because those tests are the ONLY metric teacher unions will allow to gauge teacher performance...
They give kids no homework, they insist kids go to bed early, eat big breakfasts, and dedicate themselves to taking the tests.
Ken
I'll add in an anecdote. My mother is a substitute teacher (in Florida) for a class, and has been asked to give out this state given test. The class is something along the very bottom of the school (some kids may not speak english as one possible reason to be in it). Well, the school was asked to give an answer key for the required test, which they didn't give. So I was asked to make a key for her to grade with. The test was horrible. The most obvious problems are with the formatting. There is no clean indication of where a question ends and the next begins. Some of the questions have numbers floating above or below the parenthesis they are supposed to be inside. Some of the questions have multiple answers, which would be fine, if the wording did not seem as if it was trying to misdirect the students on what they are trying to do. It even goes so far that on the answer sheet made for this specific test, the last two questions were obviously switched, as the penultimate had 5 answer fields for 4 possible answers, and the last had 4 answer fields for 5 possible answers. Remember, some of these require selecting more than one bubble.
There is all of that, and not to mention the copy job on making the test was even shoddy. I have no idea if the test is actually from the State, the District, or from the School itself, but the test looked like it was setup for the students to fail on purpose. Being put through things like this, I can only sympathize with the students if they are forced to act out to get any sort of attention. There is certainly a lack of care on the school's part for them.
The school environment is set up just like the workplace:
1. Show up between X hours every day.
2. Everyone follows the same rules, learns the same things, and performs the same tasks.
3. You're punished if you step a toe out of line. Threats of suspension, expulsion are equally expressed as detrimental as being fired / laid off, though many of us know the setbacks of the latter.
4. You'll get a little bit of time for electives, but even those will be limited in time and selection. (Equate that to limited time off.)
5. Everyone pay attention to the 1 person talking to you, and do as you're told; that is, the majority follows the minority in a hierarchy where those in charge are hardly ever punished for treating people like crap -- unless it affects the bottom line ($$$).
I think 12 years of experience in this environment is great training.
The only grade you get to do everything is kindergarten. I refer to the book by Robert Fulghum, "All I Really Need to KNow I Learned in Kindergarten."
In my personal experience, this is mostly true: share with others, treat people with respect, say please and thank you. I may not be a millionaire, or a billionaire, or even own a house (I live in an apt.), but I also don't have a shitty life. Throughout school, I fought back against anything that didn't make sense: teachers decisions included, giving many people the idea that I'd be a failure in life. Boy, I've proved them wrong. I've never been fired, or laid off, and since I've been 19, haven't earned less than $36,000/yr for a single person. (That's more than 3x the poverty line for 1 person.)
Education isn't the problem, it's teaching kids to stop being complacent with what's available. If it doesn't make sense, question it. Instead, I direct you to this: http://www.stevepavlina.com/blog/2006/07/10-reasons-you-should-never-get-a-job/
To be fair, public schools also fail. You link to Philly.com. Philadelphia School District doubled funding over 10 years and had absolutely nothing to show for it. While I think that the way we fund schools is bat-shit crazy - giving wealthier kids more resources and poor kids less - please don't summarily dismiss just how corrupt many of our cities' school systems are. You are largely correct that charters funnel money away from kids, and yet in Newark more money reaches students at the charter schools than at the traditional public schools. Small wonder parents go to great lengths to get their kids into charters in certain districts.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
The needs of teachers are that they remain employed with the highest salary and best benefits they can get.
Yeah those evil profiteering teachers. Everywhere I go I see teachers in ferraris, research scientists drinking champaign!
In the real world not everyone is motivated by greed and capitalism:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/...
If teachers wanted higher salaries over all else, then why would they buy school supplies out of pocket? Many teachers, a large fraction I think actually want to teach, and teach well. That way like so many humans they can get real satisfaction out of a job well done.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
Standardized Tests Overwhelming Public Schools
The problem in America is not the concept of standards, but their execution. The way we have them, they are a Rube Goldberg clusterfuck of a system, done like no one else on Earth. And for what? Supposedly to "fix" the lack of education in this country, compared to other countries such as Finland, Singapore, Japan or Germany.
Which is completely bollocks because the problem with education in this country is that we do not have a sensible way of funding public schools. We fund them primarily with property taxes. And obviously that creates a subsidized segregated system where people living in well-to-do zip codes (like me) get the best resources for their children, whereas people living in poor areas get to send their children to public schools that don't even have soap with which to wash their hands.
The problem is economic segregation, and what we see now are just symptoms that were going to happen, federal government or not. The only good thing I see about standardized tests is that they are the final catalysts that make all this crap come up to the surface.
If the federal government has a say on education, then the federal government must provide a fix % bracket for funding as a function of the number of children in a given school, regardless of zip code.
If we do not want the feds in it, but want the states to fund education, then do the same, have the federal government dictate a minimum % bracket for funding schools as a function of the # of children in them, regardless of zip code.
Either way will solve the root cause of all this crap. Then and only then we should be tackling test standardization.
If teachers wanted higher salaries over all else, then why would they buy school supplies out of pocket?
Those are the good teachers who are sadly a vanishing breed. However the unions do not just represent good teachers they represent the bad ones as well. I'd happily support higher salaries for teachers: my mum was a teacher, my sister is a teacher and I'm a professor. Salaries are so low that they are part of the problem at the moment since it is hard to attract excellent teachers to the profession.
My point was not that teachers are not due a raise but that the unions are damaging the profession immensely because their priorities have increasingly little overlap with the priorities of the profession. In the absence of money from government for salaries they negotiate for increased job security (which makes it hard to fire bad teachers) and for a reduced work load (which impacts student learning).
This damage has resulted in a loss of respect for teachers: it's hard to respect your son's teacher when she is telling him that 6/9 is less than 2/3 even when he, and later I, pointed out that they are the same fraction. When a teacher like that cannot be fired for gross incompetence (that was not her only gap in knowledge) you have a serious problem.