dumbing down our curriculum - what th' heck??

Dad,

This is the real joke behind some of the high stakes testing, too. Last year here in NC, there was an “error” in the grading of the elementary math tests, and something like 25% correct was passing. Now no one knew this because they have an incomprehensible scoring system to obscure the real results (score ranges like 128-152, that kind of thing). Actually, passing was supposed to be 40 something %!!!! Is that not a joke!? Our state had paid millions for some idiots to come up with these tests and they are for all practical reasons meaningless. Parents are deluded into thinking their kids are on grade level with marginal scores which certainly do NOT mean the child is on level. I hate the state testing and will pull my youngest child out and homeschool if these tests cause her problems.We should be using a nationally standardized reading and math tests at the elementary level only and save all that other money for instruction (or balancing the state budget).

Janis

I take it that you do not live in Massachusetts where the high-stakes MCAS testing is the hardest in the US; teachers are currently protesting the 10th grade math test as TOO difficult.

Let me say that our tests are also hard. They have too few kids passing them, so that is why they have set the passing mark too low.

In our state, WA, the kids are still taking ‘test’ tests for our high
stakes testing.

In other words, the tests don’t count and the kids know it!

So they are blowing off the tests, marking randomly, not
doing questions, making patterns on the marking sheet.

But, the kicker is, the teachers are now remediating the
kids due to the test results.

Not only are they teaching to the test, they are using faulty
data - the problem is so bad that a teacher actually wrote a
guest editorial for the paper with his name and picture.

You know for a teacher to go out on a limb like this
the problem has to be very bad.

Anne

I’ve got a better idea, why don’t we stop standardized testing of all kids at all grade levels. The use of these tests is nonsensical and certainly are not used for development of instruction. The money saved for these ridiculous tests could be spent on smaller classes and more hands on materials. For some reason this is the only way legislators can measure the effects of education

But hey, the REgents folks have totally bowlderized passages to test “literacy” — oh, they’ll stop now that they’ve been busted. The purpose of those literacy tests being to see whether or not you could appreciate the finer points of literature (these weren’t “can you read a recipe” literacy tests) — but of course all the finer points were sucked out.