ATTN Suu and Nigel: this is why your fellow students derp so hard

[Doktor Howl]

Cram, teachers go to college for SIX YEARS to learn to teach and to assess progress. Furthermore, they are required to have annual ongoing postgraduate training. There are tests like the SAT and college placement exams that test a student's readiness to enter college. Furthermore, every year the next teacher sees the progress made by the previous teacher. Why do we need standardized testing to assess progress?

The worst thing to ever happen to our educational system is mandatory standardized testing and tying funding to performance on those tests.

Why should we trust people that are merely trained, when we have politicians?

[Suu]

Cram, teachers go to college for SIX YEARS to learn to teach and to assess progress. Furthermore, they are required to have annual ongoing postgraduate training. There are tests like the SAT and college placement exams that test a student's readiness to enter college. Furthermore, every year the next teacher sees the progress made by the previous teacher. Why do we need standardized testing to assess progress?

The worst thing to ever happen to our educational system is mandatory standardized testing and tying funding to performance on those tests.

Why should we trust people that are merely trained, when we have politicians?

Clearly, politicians know best. I mean, they already went to school, and stuff. They KNOW things.

[Sita]

Cram, teachers go to college for SIX YEARS to learn to teach and to assess progress. Furthermore, they are required to have annual ongoing postgraduate training. There are tests like the SAT and college placement exams that test a student's readiness to enter college. Furthermore, every year the next teacher sees the progress made by the previous teacher. Why do we need standardized testing to assess progress?

The worst thing to ever happen to our educational system is mandatory standardized testing and tying funding to performance on those tests.

When I graduated in 2000 in Florida, we had ONE test we HAD to take, and that was the HSCT, or the High School Competency Test. It was basically a GED test. I missed one question on the whole damn thing. If you failed, you had one shot to take it again, if you failed that, you did not get a diploma. We had the CTBS testing through elementary and middle school (this was more of a placement test to see if you qualified for honors than anything) and the Florida Writes Exam, which was administered in 5th, 8th, and 10th grade. That was exactly like what was on the GRE, it assessed your essay writing skills, because they STRESSED these things. You need writing and comprehension skills to succeed.

When I was in 10th grade, they put me in the beta for the FCAT, the test that would become Florida's downfall. This thing...OMG. They grabbed me from class and said, "Take this." 2 hours of my life, with no prep, and I got a 75 on it. A solid C.  The math was stuff I had not taken yet, and even though it counted for absolutely nothing, and doesn't show up on my transcript, it nearly brought me to tears. There is no more CTBS test, no more Florida Writes, only the FCAT. I did better on the SAT and the ACT than that fucking beta test. It seemed entirely unreasonable to test 10th graders on calculus and difficult vocabulary that was at least on the senior level. But, they accepted it. That's why Florida schools are so fucking bad. It's not the students, it's not the teachers, it's not the schools in general, it's that fucking test. Students are graduating with test answers, no writing skills, no vocational skills, no logic or anything. The Rhode Island test is even worse, and the schools in Providence are absolutely terrible. This is a relatively low-income area with lots of immigrants, of COURSE the tests aren't going to yield good results, and neither is closing the damn schools that have the low scores. It's not fucking fair to these kids.

I absolutely HATED that first FCAT. Was so relieved that it wouldn't get put into effect until after I had graduated in '99. I never would have graduated if that thing counted.

Thankfully they are getting rid of it next year. Going to something called Core that some other states have. Hope that it's at least somewhat better.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

Cram, teachers go to college for SIX YEARS to learn to teach and to assess progress. Furthermore, they are required to have annual ongoing postgraduate training. There are tests like the SAT and college placement exams that test a student's readiness to enter college. Furthermore, every year the next teacher sees the progress made by the previous teacher. Why do we need standardized testing to assess progress?

The worst thing to ever happen to our educational system is mandatory standardized testing and tying funding to performance on those tests.

Why should we trust people that are merely trained, when we have politicians?

Clearly, politicians know best. I mean, they already went to school, and stuff. They KNOW things.

You can't go trusting educators to know their job. They need to be told how to do it.

[Doktor Howl]

I find myself in the middle.  The middle is a shrinking thing.  Nanny-staters on one side, telling me what's SAFE and what PROTECTS ME, and libertarian savages on the other, telling me to JETTISON THE WEAK and get rid of governance.  I haven't really changed any of my views, but I find my feet coming down into one side or the other now and again, simply because there's no middle left.

[Suu]

Cram, teachers go to college for SIX YEARS to learn to teach and to assess progress. Furthermore, they are required to have annual ongoing postgraduate training. There are tests like the SAT and college placement exams that test a student's readiness to enter college. Furthermore, every year the next teacher sees the progress made by the previous teacher. Why do we need standardized testing to assess progress?

The worst thing to ever happen to our educational system is mandatory standardized testing and tying funding to performance on those tests.

When I graduated in 2000 in Florida, we had ONE test we HAD to take, and that was the HSCT, or the High School Competency Test. It was basically a GED test. I missed one question on the whole damn thing. If you failed, you had one shot to take it again, if you failed that, you did not get a diploma. We had the CTBS testing through elementary and middle school (this was more of a placement test to see if you qualified for honors than anything) and the Florida Writes Exam, which was administered in 5th, 8th, and 10th grade. That was exactly like what was on the GRE, it assessed your essay writing skills, because they STRESSED these things. You need writing and comprehension skills to succeed.

When I was in 10th grade, they put me in the beta for the FCAT, the test that would become Florida's downfall. This thing...OMG. They grabbed me from class and said, "Take this." 2 hours of my life, with no prep, and I got a 75 on it. A solid C.  The math was stuff I had not taken yet, and even though it counted for absolutely nothing, and doesn't show up on my transcript, it nearly brought me to tears. There is no more CTBS test, no more Florida Writes, only the FCAT. I did better on the SAT and the ACT than that fucking beta test. It seemed entirely unreasonable to test 10th graders on calculus and difficult vocabulary that was at least on the senior level. But, they accepted it. That's why Florida schools are so fucking bad. It's not the students, it's not the teachers, it's not the schools in general, it's that fucking test. Students are graduating with test answers, no writing skills, no vocational skills, no logic or anything. The Rhode Island test is even worse, and the schools in Providence are absolutely terrible. This is a relatively low-income area with lots of immigrants, of COURSE the tests aren't going to yield good results, and neither is closing the damn schools that have the low scores. It's not fucking fair to these kids.

I absolutely HATED that first FCAT. Was so relieved that it wouldn't get put into effect until after I had graduated in '99. I never would have graduated if that thing counted.

Thankfully they are getting rid of it next year. Going to something called Core that some other states have. Hope that it's at least somewhat better.

In 2000 we still had the HSCT. I don't believe the FCAT went into effect until 2002. I feel like I seriously escaped in the nick of time. I do know they're getting rid of it (The one good thing Voldemort has done?) but that doesn't help that a decade plus of students have been subjected to it.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

I find myself in the middle.  The middle is a shrinking thing.  Nanny-staters on one side, telling me what's SAFE and what PROTECTS ME, and libertarian savages on the other, telling me to JETTISON THE WEAK and get rid of governance.  I haven't really changed any of my views, but I find my feet coming down into one side or the other now and again, simply because there's no middle left.

The funny thing is, trusting teachers to do their job IS the middle. It sure as hell isn't any Libertarian bullshit.

Because teachers have very specific credentials and licensing, overseen by the state. They have state-mandated continuing education. They are reviewed by their peers and overseen by a principal, the school administration, and the state board.

Yeas, sometimes incompetent teachers are allowed to continue teaching when they should be ousted... but NCLB doesn't seem to do fuck-all to address that problem.

The single best predictor of how a child will do in school is  their socioeconomic status. Federally-mandated standardized testing that is tied to the finding a school will receive does nothing but tie teachers' hands and punish poor students, as well as make teachers less willing to teach in poor neighborhoods.

It's FUCKED.

[Doktor Howl]

I find myself in the middle.  The middle is a shrinking thing.  Nanny-staters on one side, telling me what's SAFE and what PROTECTS ME, and libertarian savages on the other, telling me to JETTISON THE WEAK and get rid of governance.  I haven't really changed any of my views, but I find my feet coming down into one side or the other now and again, simply because there's no middle left.

The funny thing is, trusting teachers to do their job IS the middle. It sure as hell isn't any Libertarian bullshit.

Yes, I know.  But as a person who values properly applied regulation, it still puts my back up.  So do many other things I agree with.  The right thing isn't always the comfortable thing.

Because teachers have very specific credentials and licensing, overseen by the state. They have state-mandated continuing education. They are reviewed by their peers and overseen by a principal, the school administration, and the state board.

Yeas, sometimes incompetent teachers are allowed to continue teaching when they should be ousted... but NCLB doesn't seem to do fuck-all to address that problem.

In fact, it supports the crappy teachers at the expense of the decent ones.

The single best predictor of how a child will do in school is  their socioeconomic status. Federally-mandated standardized testing that is tied to the finding a school will receive does nothing but tie teachers' hands and punish poor students, as well as make teachers less willing to teach in poor neighborhoods.

It's FUCKED.

Well, it's been fairly obvious from the beginning that it was designed to further America's aristocracy, by shoving the peasants down into the shit a bit further.  The struggling schools get less, the posh schools get more.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

I find myself in the middle.  The middle is a shrinking thing.  Nanny-staters on one side, telling me what's SAFE and what PROTECTS ME, and libertarian savages on the other, telling me to JETTISON THE WEAK and get rid of governance.  I haven't really changed any of my views, but I find my feet coming down into one side or the other now and again, simply because there's no middle left.

The funny thing is, trusting teachers to do their job IS the middle. It sure as hell isn't any Libertarian bullshit.

Yes, I know.  But as a person who values properly applied regulation, it still puts my back up.  So do many other things I agree with.  The right thing isn't always the comfortable thing.

Because teachers have very specific credentials and licensing, overseen by the state. They have state-mandated continuing education. They are reviewed by their peers and overseen by a principal, the school administration, and the state board.

Yeas, sometimes incompetent teachers are allowed to continue teaching when they should be ousted... but NCLB doesn't seem to do fuck-all to address that problem.

In fact, it supports the crappy teachers at the expense of the decent ones.

The single best predictor of how a child will do in school is  their socioeconomic status. Federally-mandated standardized testing that is tied to the finding a school will receive does nothing but tie teachers' hands and punish poor students, as well as make teachers less willing to teach in poor neighborhoods.

It's FUCKED.

Well, it's been fairly obvious from the beginning that it was designed to further America's aristocracy, by shoving the peasants down into the shit a bit further.  The struggling schools get less, the posh schools get more.

Bingo!

[Golden Applesauce]

I'm currently helping with some "school management" software for a big charter school chain in NY. Judging by relative emphasis on the software, the only things they cover are how to wear a uniform properly and taking assessments. So. Many. Assessments. They have like a dozen different types of practice assessment, most of which are taken I think 2x a year, starting from kindergarten.

I can't speak for the actual educators (only thing I know about them is that they have a really high turnover rate), but the people managing the software project are completely incompetent in every possible way. Aside from just general software and management idiocy, they sent us (third party tool vendor) a database with "test" data - which included photographs and contact info for every student, along with medical problems, family alerts, who's allowed to pick the kid up from school, disciplinary records, test scores, whatever. Worse, it turns out that if you were to know the SOOPER SEKRIT adress of their testing site, you can get at all of that using the unsecured accounts they use to test the site. I'm pretty sure something there is against the law.

But their kindergarteners have some of the best standardized math tests cores in the state, so that's al right then.

[Cramulus]

Cram, teachers go to college for SIX YEARS to learn to teach and to assess progress. Furthermore, they are required to have annual ongoing postgraduate training. There are tests like the SAT and college placement exams that test a student's readiness to enter college. Furthermore, every year the next teacher sees the progress made by the previous teacher. Why do we need standardized testing to assess progress?

The worst thing to ever happen to our educational system is mandatory standardized testing and tying funding to performance on those tests.

I agree, NCLB has deformed the curriculum to the point that it's nearly useless. I think it should be scrapped, as do most of the teachers I work with in educational publishing. But here's a bit of background about the situation which prompted the NCLB... (which you probably already know, but for the sake of people who don't....)

There were many places in the country where education simply sucked. I'm talking about rural counties in Montana, South Dakota, Missouri, Kentucky, West Virginia. These schools were falling apart - their meager education budget tended to be spent on keeping the roof from leaking. There were entire counties where there were no books in the library published after 1980. As late as 2000, some schools were lucky to have a single Apple-][ in their library, much less a computer lab. Furthermore, it's very difficult to fire a tenured teacher, and many schools were loaded with bad teachers. Bad teachers + no continuing ed budget = bad education.

The result of this was that there were many schools which could not equip kids to get jobs outside of the farm.

So in comes the federal government. Whether or not you agree that education should be controlled at the federal level, that's what we apparently voted for in 2000. Bush campaigned on education reform, and when he won, he put aside a lot of money for education. So the question arises - who do we give these monies to?

And that's the real purpose of standardized testing--- it's not so much because these tests are valid measurements of education, their purpose is so that the federal government can identify which schools "need help". They are a measurement of teachers. (Of course, federal help is often a dangerous medicine which comes with a long list of side effects.)


The NCLB is also part of a power struggle between state and federal government. (btw, Foucault's writing in Discipline & Punish about education as a form of discipline/control and as a mode of power is extremely relevant here) And the other part of the story is that the Bush family invests heavily in educational publishers who create these tests everybody is required to take. At my company's shareholder meetings, Jeb Bush is often a key speaker. Educational Publishers play a role in this too - follow the money, right? There are powerful lobbies for standardized testing. Part of the corporate mission is to "change the culture so that it values education." Blerg, I could go on about that for pages.


But anyway, the question that needs to be answered if the NCLB is to be overturned is --- what should the federal government be doing about shitty schools?

Many schools are now dependent on the federal money received through NCLB policies. And many schools, prior to NCLB, could not afford basic education materials. There were entire counties whose high school graduates had a 5th grade reading level and could not type. Should the federal government step in? There's a lot of debate around that point, but I think the cat is already out of that bag.

[Cramulus]

as a brief devil's advocate point, I will note that there are a few silver linings to NCLB --- teachers are now required to have a degree in the subject they are teaching, which wasn't always the case. (You'd have physics teachers in charge of social studies classes, etc, which was mainly a product of tight school budgets.) Also, under NCLB, parents can choose to pull their kids from failing schools and bus them to a better school, which is nice. Finally, a lot of schools could not afford computers, and NCLB provided a large budget for that. Now most schools at least have a computer lab, which I don't think that would have happened as rapidly if it was left up to local politicians.

all those things can easily be separated from NCLB though, so I don't they're in themselves a loud argument that the policy should be kept around

[Suu]

I find myself in the middle.  The middle is a shrinking thing.  Nanny-staters on one side, telling me what's SAFE and what PROTECTS ME, and libertarian savages on the other, telling me to JETTISON THE WEAK and get rid of governance.  I haven't really changed any of my views, but I find my feet coming down into one side or the other now and again, simply because there's no middle left.

The funny thing is, trusting teachers to do their job IS the middle. It sure as hell isn't any Libertarian bullshit.

Yes, I know.  But as a person who values properly applied regulation, it still puts my back up.  So do many other things I agree with.  The right thing isn't always the comfortable thing.

Because teachers have very specific credentials and licensing, overseen by the state. They have state-mandated continuing education. They are reviewed by their peers and overseen by a principal, the school administration, and the state board.

Yeas, sometimes incompetent teachers are allowed to continue teaching when they should be ousted... but NCLB doesn't seem to do fuck-all to address that problem.

In fact, it supports the crappy teachers at the expense of the decent ones.

The single best predictor of how a child will do in school is  their socioeconomic status. Federally-mandated standardized testing that is tied to the finding a school will receive does nothing but tie teachers' hands and punish poor students, as well as make teachers less willing to teach in poor neighborhoods.

It's FUCKED.

Well, it's been fairly obvious from the beginning that it was designed to further America's aristocracy, by shoving the peasants down into the shit a bit further.  The struggling schools get less, the posh schools get more.

Bingo!

THIS. SO THIS. This is why Providence schools are struggling. This is why Central Falls, RI schools had to be taken over by the government. Not because the kids are stupid, but these are poor, rundown areas, and it DOES make a difference. Poor students have less access to materials needed to succeed. Without certain tools, even a damn scientific calculator, you can't expect them to excel.

[Cramulus]

Because teachers have very specific credentials and licensing, overseen by the state. They have state-mandated continuing education. They are reviewed by their peers and overseen by a principal, the school administration, and the state board.

Yeas, sometimes incompetent teachers are allowed to continue teaching when they should be ousted... but NCLB doesn't seem to do fuck-all to address that problem.

In fact, it supports the crappy teachers at the expense of the decent ones.

it depends on how you define crappy

The federal government defines it as an inability to get kids to make "Adequate Yearly Progress" (AYP). If a school as a whole has a bad AYP for several years in a row, the government steps in. In the beginning, the gov holds the schools hand, requiring them to come up with a plan for improvement, and providing budget in the form of free tutoring and other supplemental education services. But if the school's AYP is low for five years or more, the government has the authority to fire & replace everybody.

I'm sure there a few places in the country where this has actually really helped. Somewhere. 

[Doktor Howl]

Because teachers have very specific credentials and licensing, overseen by the state. They have state-mandated continuing education. They are reviewed by their peers and overseen by a principal, the school administration, and the state board.

Yeas, sometimes incompetent teachers are allowed to continue teaching when they should be ousted... but NCLB doesn't seem to do fuck-all to address that problem.

In fact, it supports the crappy teachers at the expense of the decent ones.

it depends on how you define crappy

Oh, that's easy.  Teachers who teach to the test, because the lesson plan is something to get to the bottom of ASAP.