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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 biggest problem with No Child Left Behind is it turns out to be No Child Allowed to Excel.
So we need to fix Teach The Test first.
Maybe education should be back in the hands of the states, like it used to be. Yes, I know that'll result in ignorant morons who will be taught to scorn evolution, or consider Pi to be 3 (that's a myth, though, but funny), but then people can choose which states to live in... which was the whole point of allowing states to operate largely independently to begin with.
Stupid sexy Flanders.
9 months school x 20 days/mo x 8 hrs/day = 1440 hours.
1.3% of their time is spent on test. So what? They spend more time than that at lunch, at recess, or even in the toilet (10min/day = 30 hours/year)
If they're going to attack standardized tests, at least have an argument that withstands even basic contextual comparisons.
This report, by the Council of the Great City Schools, is brought to you by the Teacher's Unions, who oppose any attempt to evaluate teacher performance.
Show me where the federal government is given the authority to regulate education in our constitution.
You can't because control over education was not granted to the federal government in our constitution.
Schools are staffed, managed and financed locally. Local control over education means that you have a say in how your kids are educated. If you are unhappy with your schools, you can elect a new school board. If that fails, you can always move to another school district.
Federal control over education standards will be politicized like everything else in Washington. Do you really want the dysfunction that is Washington DC ending up in your kid's classroom?
Ron Paul is right. The federal government needs to be out of the education business entirely.
30 hours a year! Why, if spread out over the 32 weeks of school (185 days = one school year, if there are 5 school days per week, then 185 / 5 = about 32 weeks) that comes out to less than 45 minutes a week, or put another way, about three full school days out of 185, or about 2% of school time per year...
Something that occupies 2% of student class time per school year is overwhelming students?
No, it isn't. The teachers unions have made standardized testing the only metric allowed to measure their performance, and now they want to remove even that metric.
Ken
Oh yes, Bush pushed his education program, and the 'success' of Houston's school district. We then get No Child Left Behind. Oh wait, W took credit for NCLB, but didn't actually write most of it. Oh well, he pushed something, and took credit for something that he didn't understand. Just like Iraq.
In my mind, George W. Bush's big screwups were NCLB, and Iraq. No wonder his brother is having trouble.
Article 1, Section 8, Section 1: "The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts and excises, to pay the debts and provide for the common defense and general welfare of the United States."...and Section 18: "To make all laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into execution the foregoing powers." Congress controls the money, and they can use it any way that is "necessary and proper" for the "general welfare" of our nation. Pretty broad power.
But, to clarify, Congress does not require any state to follow the educational laws they have passed. If they refuse to do so, they just cannot receive desperately-needed federal funding. The constitution allows it, as opined by the Supreme Court in South Dakota v. Dole.
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.
The problem is that many school districts blame the teachers for problems the teachers cannot control. If 15% of your class are students with English as a second language and 10% of your class have parents with substance abuse problems and 10% are neglected enough that school lunch is their only meal of the day, it's going to be disruptive enough that you'll have a hell of a time teaching most of the kids anything.
In turn, that means that a school district that simply disciplines that teacher for inadequate performance isn't solving any problems.
Any bureaucracy anywhere has a tendency to stop working for the people that built it and start working for its own ends. It doesn't matter if it's in a corporation, a government agency, or a workers' union. That's something fundamental to bureaucracy, and we must always battle it. But the need for teachers' unions still exists, because school districts in this country routinely do want to punish teachers for failing to perform or cut compensation to all teachers to save taxes.
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.
I keep hearing this line, "only meal for the day". If you have evidence that a child is only getting a single school provided meal you have an obligation to report it as child abuse. This meme is so pervasive that it always comes up in discussions about education.
I only look human.
My mother is a halfling and my dad is an ogre, so that makes me an Ogreling