Cheating allowed and ENCOURAGED?!

[WickedNerd]

No Child Left Behind really means No Child Left Untested.

I hate standardized testing. I agree that it is a helpful tool in some regard for the bare basics of seeing what a children knows, but that's it. Just a basic tool. There is no depth to that knowledge. There's no creativity. There's no meaningful application that will insure that the child will remember what that concept is in the years to come.

Teachers rejoice when April is over and the state tests are done. I actually heard a colleague say once after tests were done, "Thank heavens! Maybe I can actually get them to learn something now!"

 

[WyandotteTX]

All of this is the product of letting politicians decide what is to be taught to our children. The mantra is always to turn education into business with the same accountability as business. Education isnt business, you cant treat all students as one entity. Especially in todays world. But if they really thought about it business doesnt work the way they are making education either......if they did they would be going out of business.
In Texas the standardized testing is getting much harder with the transition from the old TAKS test to the new STARR or End of Course Exams. My kids took a benchmark EOC test this past spring and it was more difficult than any of the TAKS test they had previously been exposed to. But I do agree, if all we are ever teaching is to the test then that is all that will be learned.

 

[WickedNerd]

Quote:
You know. We talked about that in a staff meeting once...the whole education should be a business idea and how unrealistic it is. Then my principal brought out this article. I love it.

The Blueberry Story: The teacher gives the businessman a lesson

by Jamie Robert Vollmer

"If I ran my business the way you people operate your schools, I wouldn't be in business very long!"
I stood before an auditorium filled with outraged teachers who were becoming angrier by the minute. My speech had entirely consumed their precious 90 minutes of inservice. Their initial icy glares had turned to restless agitation. You could cut the hostility with a knife.

I represented a group of business people dedicated to improving public schools. I was an executive at an ice cream company that became famous in the middle1980s when People Magazine chose our blueberry as the "Best Ice Cream in America."

I was convinced of two things. First, public schools needed to change; they were archaic selecting and sorting mechanisms designed for the industrial age and out of step with the needs of our emerging "knowledge society". Second, educators were a major part of the problem: they resisted change, hunkered down in their feathered nests, protected by tenure and shielded by a bureaucratic monopoly. They needed to look to business. We knew how to produce quality. Zero defects! TQM! Continuous improvement!

In retrospect, the speech was perfectly balanced - equal parts ignorance and arrogance.

As soon as I finished, a woman's hand shot up. She appeared polite, pleasant -- she was, in fact, a razor-edged, veteran, high school English teacher who had been waiting to unload.

She began quietly, "We are told, sir, that you manage a company that makes good ice cream."

I smugly replied, "Best ice cream in America, Ma'am."

"How nice," she said. "Is it rich and smooth?"

"Sixteen percent butterfat," I crowed.

"Premium ingredients?" she inquired.

"Super-premium! Nothing but triple A." I was on a roll. I never saw the next line coming.

"Mr. Vollmer," she said, leaning forward with a wicked eyebrow raised to the sky, "when you are standing on your receiving dock and you see an inferior shipment of blueberries arrive, what do you do?"

In the silence of that room, I could hear the trap snap…. I was dead meat, but I wasn't going to lie.

"I send them back."

"That's right!" she barked, "and we can never send back our blueberries. We take them big, small, rich, poor, gifted, exceptional, abused, frightened, confident, homeless, rude, and brilliant. We take them with ADHD, junior rheumatoid arthritis, and English as their second language. We take them all! Every one! And that, Mr. Vollmer, is why it's not a business. It's school!"

In an explosion, all 290 teachers, principals, bus drivers, aides, custodians and secretaries jumped to their feet and yelled, "Yeah! Blueberries! Blueberries!"

And so began my long transformation.

Since then, I have visited hundreds of schools. I have learned that a school is not a business. Schools are unable to control the quality of their raw material, they are dependent upon the vagaries of politics for a reliable revenue stream, and they are constantly mauled by a howling horde of disparate, competing customer groups that would send the best CEO screaming into the night.

None of this negates the need for change. We must change what, when, and how we teach to give all children maximum opportunity to thrive in a post-industrial society. But educators cannot do this alone; these changes can occur only with the understanding, trust, permission and active support of the surrounding community. For the most important thing I have learned is that schools reflect the attitudes, beliefs and health of the communities they serve, and therefore, to improve public education means more than changing our schools, it means changing America.

http://teachers.net/gazette/JUN02/vollmer.html

 

[ChickieBooBoo]

Quote:
I have to agree, teachers go through university to learn how to be teachers and how to teach. Like you said, some parents really aren't cut out to be teachers. I struggled to learn how to do long divsion, my parents tried to teach me for weeks and I didn't understand, one lunch hour with the teacher and I had it aced. I couldn't imagine trying to get through school if my parents were teaching me. Heck, I'm almost through highschool and I know more then them in all of my subjects.

 

[mom'sfolly]

I hate No Child Left Behind and the testing that goes with it. I also hate that every time someone says something bad about public schools it is completely generalized and the chimes of "that's why I homeschool" start coming in.

NCLB is an unfunded mandate that forces testing to determine which schools are passing or failing; not what children are learning. Each state is allowed a different standard for testing, and every school is forced to teach children how to test well. If schools don't have high enough test scores, they get closed down. I don't know a single teacher that likes the testing. Most parents I know don't like them either. They say little about a child's learning or how a school is really doing. Yes, there has to be some way of measuring learning and school performance, this isn't it. If you really want the tests to matter, they need to be uniform and universal, and actually test something that matters. Every school, district, homeschool and child would need to take the same test, at the same time. There should also not be an automatic fail option, everyone has a bad day; sometimes there are even bad weeks, months or years. My kids' school had heavy equipment operating outside for months, making noise, dust and distraction. They testing still went on, as did school and learning.

 

[PotterWatch]

This kind of thing is the unfortunate consequence of standardized testing being the most important measure of a school's success. It is really too bad that teachers have their creativity and teaching skill stifled by the need to constantly prepare for testing. One of the many issues with the current school system.

 

[Sonoran Silkies]

Quote:
I'll stick my neck out on a limb, and say that I do not agree that standardized tests are a bad thing. They test information that has been determined is appropriate for the grade level. Now whether a specific test is grade-appropriate, is a different matter. Some tests may cover things that are too easy, too difficult or simply not things taught in that grade. Yes, not all kids do well on tests, and there are indeed additional ways of measuring progress, but if teachers are covering the material that their state mandates for a specific grade, and if the test covers the same material, I see no issue. I think parents get more hyper about testing than do kids, and many of the times when kids get worried, they have picked it up from their parents. It is just a test! And most (not all) have no real lasting impact on an individual student. And usually the ones that DO make a difference can be retaken at a later date.

 

[Sonoran Silkies]

Quote:
My contention is that teachers should teach the assigned subject, and beyond a few minutes of "this is how to mark the bubble for the answer you have selected," instructions to skip questions you do not know and come back to them once you have completed the answers you do know, and whether it is appropriate to make the best guess or not, that is all that needs to be done on "teaching the test." If they have done a good job teaching the assigned material, then the students should do reasonably well.

 

[ChickLover98]

I personally hate the tests we have to take. We 'train' all year for these PSSA tests and learn almost nothing to help us in our future. As being one of the overly smart people in my grade, it borres me to death.

 

[geepy]

I went to school in the sixties when this testing stuff was unheard of. I learned enough to buy my own home. I have no debt. I can balance my check book and I even figured out the internet.
I think the kids these days are so into testing they don't know how to live a real life.