Looks like I'll have it easy at my volunteer job next week since I think my library is being used for testing. I think it might be the BIG ONE, you know part of the MCAS. It's hard to keep track of what specific test is being used when.
I know we have to have some way to measure progress, gauge success. It's just that so much pressure is centered around this one test that it is impossible to get a true, accurate picture of the effectiveness of the education. All we end up doing is teaching the test.
More control of the educational direction should come from the teachers after all teaching is what they are trained to do. Statisticians should go count beans and beans grow in a garden. Last I looked kids grow in a classroom.
What do I know? I am just a poor, disabled poet.
I don't like the test either, but if you want the US to be able to compete in the world in the next generation, how do you improve the results? What the schools have been doing obviously has not been working. Out of 70 nations, US ranks around 25 in the world and only 22 states require something similar to Massachusetts' MCAS. Supposedly Massachusetts is top in the country and look how the kids are doing!
ReplyDeleteI agree what we have been doing is not working. But what we have been doing is "testing the daylights out of our kids". We need a benchmark that's more about the mark and less about the bench.
ReplyDeleteI agree Anon 10:00 am.
ReplyDeletei agree w/ stanley..i got advanced on both 10th grade MCAs exams & graduated from LEHS without having written a paper over 3 pages, without knowing how to properly cite or even do a research paper, without having read a lot of "classic" literature. Passing one exam doesn't mean one was properly educated. Needless to say the transition to college was not easy.
ReplyDeleteYEA! Anon 1002
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