Testing obsession must end this year: Low scores were a hard lesson for Mayor Bloomberg

[proud2BlibKansan]

BY MICHAEL MULGREW

The instructional strategy of the New York City public school system - prepping children for a now-discredited series of state tests - has failed. Particularly now that the state has won nearly $700 million in new federal funds in the Race to the Top competition, we need to be honest about that failure, so we can finally focus on strategies that will make a difference for our kids.

This summer, the state Education Department, responding to widespread suspicion that state test standards were too low and that the test had become too predictable, redefined "proficiency." The result was a dramatic plunge in scores. Under the new scoring regimen, fewer than half the city's third- through eighth-graders are considered proficient in reading and just over half in mathematics, down from last year's numbers of two-thirds proficient in reading and 82% proficient in math.

This should not have been a surprise. While the city's eighth-grade reading scores on the state test were soaring, the National Assessment of Educational Progress, the gold standard for such tests, showed that eighth-grade reading scores for New York City fell from 2003 to 2007 and have only now recovered to their 2003 level. Meanwhile, out of approximately 500 "scale score" National Assessment points, New York City's fourth-grade math scores have gone up 11 points, and two other categories, 7 points each. Many other big cities have done at least as well overall, and some - particularly Atlanta, L.A. and Boston - have done substantially better.

New York has to take some important lessons from this debacle.



Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/opinions/2010/09/01/2010-09-01_testing_obsession_must_end_this_year_low_scores_were_a_hard_lesson_for_mayor_blo.html#ixzz0yK6iAYM4

[MichiganVote]

1. Gee, could it be that teachers know a thing or two billionaires do not?

[tinymontgomery]

2. Fire all the teachers

it's all their fault
:sarcasm:

[xchrom]

3. Recommend

[Starry Messenger]

4. Fire all the Mayors!!!111

[YvonneCa]

5. Hope he shared these new...

...insights with President Obama...


http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0810/41522.html



:7

[ThomCat]

6. Bloomberg and Klein should be personally fired for this shit.

It would be really nice if we could find a way to haul them in front of all the teachers they have lied to and harmed professionally, all the students they have personally hurt with their vicious policies, all the parents they have lied to and ignored, and the angry taxpayers they have given the bill to for this horrible rip-off!

Kicking autistic kids have been kicked out of their classes so they could steal the space for a privatized school, against a court order, and they justifyied it as an educational emergency. :wtf:

A prep school did not need that additional space free of charge more than those autistic kids did. And where did those Autistic kids all get shuffled to? They got scattered. They no longer have one unified place to go where the staff knew them well and was expertly trained and prepared to deal with their needs.

Blatant union busting as educational policy has to end. How the hell does that help kids? How are kids helped by getting an endless series of young teachers with little experience, no support, no resources, and extra long hours? How does the guaranteed burnout of these teachers help kids in any way?

How does it help kids to divert tax money away from public schools, to deliberately starve public schools of resources so that the public schools can be deficient, and then punish them for being deficient?

How does it help kids to take that money that should have have gone to public schools and give it to privatized, for-profit schools? Every dollar that is considered profit is not being used to educate kids. So doesn't that create a conflict of interest? When the company is required by fiduciary responsibility and by law to divert as much money as possible away from education into profit, how can the privatized school possibly be good for students? How can such a school possibly be as good as a public school where all funds are used only for the good of the students?

Private schools will have EVERY problem that public schools will have, and all the additional problems of being private authoritarian for-profit organizations too. How can all of this be ignored, and be considered the best option for educating children?

Not one study has ever come out showing that privatized schools perform even equally to public schools. They claim to be better than public schools, but they can't even show that they perform as well as public schools!

Does anyone notice that the privatized schools are owned and operated by well-connected wealthy people? Bloomberg and Klein keep giving away our tax money to friends so they can profit from the struggles of our children. It is the poorest children who pay the lifelong cost, and unionized teachers who pay the professional cost, but wealthy friends who profit. It's a trifecta for Bloomberg and Klein and their wealthy friends. :grr:

They should be up on charges and see jail time for what they have done and continue to do to the education system in NYC. This amounts to conspiracy to commit fraud over and over again, deliberate criminal gross negligence repeatedly, and white collar crime on a massive scale. :grr:

When you steal $1 from a person with money you go to jail for a long time. When you blatantly and openly steal Millions of Dollars, especially if you steal it from poor people, you get the admiration of your peers and get called a great success.