We’ve discussed the Sad State of Education often here. I’m not sure if we’ve dedicated a post to one aspect of it; Standardized Testing.
The Head Nigger In Charge says there’s too much of it, and that —“I’m going to fix it.“
Those might be the five scariest words I’ve ever heard. A virtual guarantee that the situation will wind up worse than ever.
The really scary part is that I tend to agree with that monster. How do you feel about Standardized Testing? Do the chil’run need less of it?
=======================================
President Obama Wants to Limit Standardized Testing; Announces New Guidelines
Stressed-out students nationwide, take note. Relief is on the way.
After years of complaints from teachers, parents and students alike, the Obama administration on Saturday announced new guidelines toward standardized tests, saying kids spend too much time taking “unnecessary” exams in schools.
In a Facebook video message, President Barack Obama said he hears from parents who worry about “too much testing, and from teachers who feel so much pressure to teach to a test that it takes the joy out of teaching and learning.”
“I want to fix that,” he said.
The Department of Education said “the Administration bears some of the responsibility for” the issue, releasing a “Testing Action Plan” outlining new principles for measuring student aptitude. The plan says current policies have led to “unnecessary testing” with “not enough clarity of purpose.”
The guidelines are recommendations for school districts to follow but are not binding regulations.
The administration isn’t citing specific tests that should be continued or scrapped, leaving that decision up to the particular districts as testing differs from state to state. The guidelines don’t replace those that are part of No Child Left Behind, but if Congress were to alter that law and include the Obama administration’s recommendations, districts would then be required to follow them.
Additional details will be released in January, the White House told CNN.
The administration gives general ways to assess each of those qualities.
Obama said the new guidelines call for taking only the “tests that are worth taking”– that are “high quality, aimed at good instruction” and that ensure students are “on track.”
The plan recommends that students spend no more than 2 percent of classroom time taking these tests, and that parents be notified if their child’s school exceeds this limit.
Testing shouldn’t “crowd out teaching and learning” and should just be one of many tools to measure how students and schools are performing, Obama said.
On Monday, Obama will meet with teachers and representatives of states and school districts to discuss the issue. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan and his deputy, John King, are expected to attend.
The Washington-based Council of Great City Schools said in a report issued Saturday that “there is no correlation between mandated testing time and reading math scores on the National Assessment of Educational Progress.”
“In other words,” the release said, “there’s no evidence that adding test time improves academic performance.”
Two major teachers unions lauded the Obama administration’s announcement.
“It’s common sense,” said Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers. “The fixation on high-stakes testing hasn’t moved the needle on student achievement.”
“It’s a big deal that the president and the secretaries of education-both current and future-are saying that they get it and are pledging to address the fixation on testing in tangible ways,” Weingarten said.
But, she added, “the devil is in the details.”
Meanwhile, the National Education Association tweeted an endorsement to Obama’s plan, writing on its official Twitter account, “Parents, students, educators: the administration has heard your voices! Students need #timetolearn!”
Democratic presidential front-runner Hillary Clinton also welcomed the announcement.
“I embrace the principles laid out today by the Obama Administration because they move us in the right direction,” her campaign said in a statement. “Standardized tests must be worth taking, high quality, time-limited, fair, fully transparent to students and parents, just one of multiple measures, and tied to improving learning.”
Do not ask me this question as I prepare for my Med Onc boards TOMORROW and my Hematology Boards next fucking year.
GOOD LUCK HZK !!!
Neegrows have as an average an 85 IQ. By all this testing, they are attempting to show how they are educating Neegrows. Bottom line is you can’t pack a gallon of gubmint education shit, in a Neegrow one quart brain.
Let just ensure everyone is as stupid as everyone else. That should work.
It isn’t the students that get a rash from 4, 8, 12 grade standard tests but rather the low IQ races and the failing schools. We need the tests to keep standards from going to zero.
Of course we test. And end social promotion. You advance when you learn the material.
Standardized testing is good, depending on how you implement it. It should be meant as a filter to determine who goes on to more advanced classes and higher learning. Standardized tests are usually a good proxy for IQ, and educational resources shouldn’t be wasted trying to make 85 IQ dindus into doctors and engineers. Instead, people with lower scores should be given the opportunity to work in apprenticeships under skilled craftsmen instead of spinning their wheels and feeling inadequate.
Part of the problem is SWPL whites who won’t admit that people are different, and who despise the trades that working class whites do. Another problem is the sociopathic business elites who’ve offshored our manufacturing base to countries implementing child slave labor. That reduced the amount of manufacturing jobs that a below average intelligence but hard working man could support a family on.
My grandson was just tested at school the first of the month, he has a 128 IQ and he just turned 13. I thank God he is in the gifted program and not held back by the standardized “dumb them down system”. He deserves better as he is a maff and science whiz kid.
@Starfcker: ” And end social promotion”
Gotta have social promotion – it wouldn’t be right to have 25 year old Neegrows in the third grade. Although it would be a plus if they had 3rd grade basketball teams.
“My grandson was just tested at school the first of the month, he has a 128 IQ and he just turned 13.” ———Bea Lever
I would DEMAND a DNA test, pronto. No way in fuck that’s your grandson. Unless, of course, you meant 12.8
The question here is not if Standardized Tests are necessary. Of course they are.
The question is whether or not we are testing kids too often. I say, yes. I’ve actually heard that in some areas of the country that tests are given to admit kids to PRE-SCHOOL. Really. That’s fucken nuts.
The Japs test an awful lot. They’re raising a nation of angst-filled neurotics.
I don’t know if the Standardized Tests are given too often, or if teaching to tests takes up too much classroom time. My kids are in their thirties, so I really wouldn’t know. What I do believe is that those decisions should not be made at a Federal Level. They should butt out of it and let state and local authorities make those decisions. But, of course, the Federal Government believes that they know what is best for everyone, and that those decisions are in their domain because only they can solve the problems and ensure that everything will be handled “fairly” and in an egalitarian manner. The Federal Government should stay out of all education matters, especially curriculum content. The Department of Education should be dissolved. I know that doesn’t necessarily answer your question Stucky, but I think the bonobo-in-chief should worry about more important matters such as how to improve upon his gay-looking golf swing.
nkit
Excellent answer. You are one thousand percent correct about the Feds getting the fuck out of Education. But, fat chance of that.
I’m for two standardized tests. From grammar school to high school, and to graduate high school.
But, what about graduating from one grade to the next? Back in my day (1800s) there were four (mayve 5?) grading periods for the year. Two “F”s, and you were held back. Seems simple enough to me.
But, it’s been 15+ years since my kids graduated high school, so I don’t know shit.
Let us remember that all this Fed involvement in schools was started during “W”‘s reign so his brother Neil could be cashed in on the loot. His company Ignite, started all this standardized bullshit. As I recall it was a piddly $64 million.
Westcoaster
The DOE began in 1979 under Carter. The SAT is a standardized test. It does an excellent job assessing whether a kid can do college level material. Obama and his minions want to get rid of it because they don’t think intellectual capabilities should interfere with idiots getting college degrees. It’s racist don’t you know.
@Starfcker: ” And end social promotion”
Social promotion is a kindness to the children who would otherwise be stuck with the laggards.
Putting the 13-14-15 year old black wolves in with the 11-12 year old white sheep was a disaster.
It’s no gift to those they’re passed along with, though. Not being ready for the next years material, they hold back the more capable by consuming an inordinate amount of teacher time. Not to mention tending to be more disruptive in the classroom; again preventing the more capable from achieving as much as they might otherwise.
The ideal solution would be to hold them back, but not placed in the general school population.
Thanks Admin,
The SATs worked quite well in the 1970s – 1980s+ in weeding out whether you had a reasonable chance at succeeding at a college level, but since we need to be inclusive and everyone should have an equal chance, by which they mean equal outcome, we have had to put in all sorts of qualifiers to decide who is qualified. Also since the post secondary education system has become an industry unto itself, the high schools are nothing but a feeder system used to prop up this paradigm. Without the dumbing down of the testing and the lending of trillions of dollars, this system would otherwise shrink back to its natural state.
My kids would laugh on MCAS testing days because to most in our predominately Jewish south shore town it was considered a day off since the test was so easy. It is a waste of time and money to any student who has worked at their studies in school and it really only tests the worst performing towns/cities/students, but they will continue to inflict it upon all until they get equal results, which will not be happening anytime soon.
Bob.
Get the Feds out of education and all the problems will start correcting themselves.
Admin: I’m not talking about the SAT’s I’m talking about the “no child’s behind left” bullshit.
Did you know under the “new rules” 5+5+5 does NOT equal 15? The correct answer would be 3+3+3+3+3=15. Don’t believe me? Look it up.
I’ve always enjoyed taking tests, it made the time fly by. I never really understood why people would sit in a classroom all day and not at least try to learn stuff. It’s not that hard. The stuff I do nowadays a lot frickin harder than studying in school. A typical day in math class was 2-10 pages of lessons covering only a few concepts. It is literally nothing. And yet half the students in any given class cant seem to handle it. I dont understand that, and probably never will. But when you have that going on, I can understand why doing the testing is going to be agonizing for them.
The SAT is a standardized test, but is not required for K-12 schooling or high school diploma, so I wouldn’t say it’s relevant to this question. Personally I think governments at all levels should butt out of education, and oppose standardized testing because kids don’t come standardized; it’s bullshit to say that all kids must learn algebra by 7th grade, as if they will never get a second chance. I used an “unschooling” approach when homeschooling my kids (google it), but whatever your preference is, if there were no government schools that you were forced to pay for, you would be able to choose what kind of schooling you wanted for your kid and what kind of testing you think they should have.
I found the link, you won’t believe this shit:
http://www.infowars.com/55515-is-wrong-according-to-common-core/
@Westcoaster,
I believe that shit because I’m now homeschooling a granddaughter now. She was pulled out of public school in Grade 3 because of the lack of teaching: no textbooks and almost no schoolwork papers brought home to show any ‘accomplishments.’ She was reading on a Grade 1 level, did not understand the basic Grade 2-3 math, and was struggling with most subjects. She did not like school.
More than a year has gone by. To remain in the homeschooling curriculum, our State requires end-of-year standardized testing. I suppose that is to prove to the idiots responsible for ‘education’ that she was actually learning and progressing. We worked very hard for the entire year and she was tested in July this year. We opted for the Stanford10 Full Battery and she scored in the 9th Stanine for all subjects. Her reading assessment was at Grade 12 — did she learn and progress? LOL She earned a perfect score in Math, too.
We use standard books for many subjects so I see the way “Common Core” has infiltrated into the main textbooks. Our solution for “Common Core” is to use it AFTER she has mastered the standard math processes. This way, she can achieve a high score on the standardized tests — after all, those tests are now changing to incorporate “Common Core” bullshit.
The Math is bizarre….there is a big focus on word problems that will simply not work for the average or below-average child. The prepared, and the above-average child will have to REGURGITATE “Common Core” teaching because it flies in the face of numerical logic. No wonder the Feds want to throw out testing — that will prove to parents, NGOs, and other onlookers that this “Common Core” system does not work well.
To reference the “incorrect” answers from the student test at the WND link, I can say that “Common Core” is using the word problem to force a student to ignore the basic math property known as the Commutative Property. That math property simply means that 5×3 = 3×5. Only, in a word problem, the student is being forced to perform the operation EXACTLY as stated, not using the Commutative Property. Common Core has destroyed the beauty of math being an exact, precise science. We went through this convoluted bullshit last year.
Considering everything else the commie progressives have done, is it any wonder?