Last Updated: September 08. 2011 1:22AM
Michigan Department of Education to raise bar on test scores
Student proficiency standards in key subjects may sharply increase
Mike Wilkinson, Jennifer Chambers and Francis X. Donnelly/ The Detroit News
State education officials are proposing a steep rise in testing standards that could trigger an equally sharp decline in the number of schools and districts where students are considered proficient in math, reading, science and social studies.In some cases, the students will have to correctly answer twice as many questions this year to be considered proficient, according to a draft proposal by the state Department of Education obtained by The Detroit News.
The state Board of Education will consider the tougher standards, called "cut scores," at a meeting Tuesday.
Education officials say the changes are necessary because existing standards reward students for average work and have disguised dismal ability levels. For instance, just 10 percent of third-graders are not proficient in reading, according to last year's Michigan Education Assessment Program (MEAP) tests.
More...
http://detnews.com/article/20110908/SCHOOLS/109080422/Michigan-Department-of-Education-to-raise-bar-on-test-scores#ixzz1XNkkToQLAnd here's something I found yesterday:
TUESDAY, SEP 6, 2011 14:01 ET
The "Shock Doctrine" comes to your neighborhood classroom
Corporate reformers use the fiscal crisis and campaign contributions to hype an unproven school agenda
BY DAVID SIROTA
"Let's hope the fiscal crisis doesn't get better too soon. It'll slow down reform." -- Tom Watkins, a consultant, summarizes the corporate education reform movement's current strategy to the Sunday New York Times.The Shock Doctrine, as articulated by journalist Naomi Klein, describes the process by which corporate interests use catastrophes as instruments to maximize their profit. Sometimes the events they use are natural (earthquakes), sometimes they are human-created (the 9/11 attacks) and sometimes they are a bit of both (hurricanes made stronger by human-intensified global climate change). Regardless of the particular cataclysm, though, the Shock Doctrine suggests that in the aftermath of a calamity, there is always corporate method in the smoldering madness - a method based in Disaster Capitalism.
Though Klein's book provides much evidence of the Shock Doctrine, the
Disaster Capitalists rarely come out and acknowledge their strategy. That's why Watkins' outburst of candor, buried in this front-page New York Times article yesterday, is so important: It shows that the recession and its corresponding shock to school budgets is being used by corporations to maximize revenues, all under the gauzy banner of "reform."Some background: The Times piece follows a recent Education Week report showing that as U.S. school systems are laying off teachers, letting schoolhouses crumble, and increasing class sizes, high-tech firms are hitting the public-subsidy jackpot thanks to corporate "reformers'" successful push for more "data-driven" standardized tests (more on that in a second) and more technology in the classrooms. Essentially, as the overall spending pie for public schools is shrinking, the piece of the pie for high-tech companies -- who make big campaign contributions to education policymakers -- is getting much bigger, while the piece of the pie for traditional education (teachers, school infrastructure, text books, etc.) is getting smaller.
more...
http://www.salon.com/life/education/index.html?story=/politics/feature/2011/09/06/shockreform
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