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Joined: Feb 2013
Posts: 1,228
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It's a game. Student learning is incidental to winning the high-stakes testing rounds, and lack of learning is irrelevant unless it directly affects scores on high-stakes tests.
IMO, most of the US K-12 education system should be pillaged of anything of value in it, with the rest being burned to the ground and buried under a two-foot layer of salt. It is a game. It is all about the scores and how you can play with the numbers to make it all look good. Um, in one district--might even be yours--they bus kids to lower performing schools to take AP tests to improve the ratings for the lower performing school. In another district, they put GT programs into the lowest performing schools to hide the fact that there are lower performing kids who are not getting what they need. A game indeed. This happens all over our district. Kids are a commodity to be shuffled around so that "failing" schools aren't taken over or shut down by the government. It's not just bussing gifted kids to bad schools (which definitely happens). In one twist in our district, there is a school in a bad neighborhood already containing a full time gifted program, and this school was performing enough above "failing" level that they could ship in a bunch of the worst kids from a "failing" school in a different bad neighborhood to try to even the schools out and keep them both above "failing" level. Upon mixing the kids from two different bad neighborhoods, gang warfare ensued. Our district has full time gifted programs. (They also have busywork sweatshops where the low performers are kept out, but no gifted programs, because the gifted programs are all in the ghetto.) For some reasons we're going to stick with homeschooling. ![whistle whistle](/bb/images/graemlins/default/whistle.gif)
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Joined: Apr 2014
Posts: 4,062 Likes: 4
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So this reminds me of the old rule of thumb in education (plastered all over RTI/MTSS guides, for those of you up on educational fads/buzzwords): no matter what you do, as long as you do it consistently, it will work for 80-85% of your population...be "meh" for 10-15%...and fail for 5-10%. Regardless of the composition of your student body, 15-20% will need something other than/in addition to your regular programming. And that last 5-10 will need something really different. That sounds like someone patting themselves on the back. The reality is some educational practices are a failure for the overwhelming majority of students. On the other hand, they shouldn't dismiss 10-15% of students as inevitably unservable (as if to say, why bother anyway). Well, actually what it means is that 80-85% of students will manage in spite of whatever craziness you throw at them, as long as they know what the rules of the game are. (Are some practices much better than others? Of course, but these 80-85% will learn what they are taught, regardless of how it is taught, and generally survive the school experience adequately.) The remaining 15-20% require specific thought to be put into their education. Ideally, a small amount of tweaking (ability grouping, differentiation, etc.) will take care of 10-15%. The last 5-10% will need intensive/radical modifications. It is not supposed to mean that anyone gives up on the last few percent, just that there should be an awareness of the need for a range of services in any given population of students, no matter how high- or low-performing they may appear to be compared to the general population. Of course, the reality is often far otherwise...
...pronounced like the long vowel and first letter of the alphabet...
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Joined: Feb 2011
Posts: 710
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AS long as parents and teachers keep playing the game it will continue. Take away the players or the big red ball and the game will end.
What would happen if schools refused standardised testing? No legislature can close down every single school country wide if they refuse to do testing and stick to these "requirements". Surely in your consitution (as it is in the WHO "rights of a child") is a clause about a child's right to an education?
Therefore they cannot shut down all the schools. All it takes is one district to decide to stand against the tide. And then the next one and the next one etc.
Look, I do believe it's a universal issue - I have made many many observations and comments about our local education system here in South Africa.
As even my 7 year old figured about standing by while "bad" things happen, "you have to do something different to get a new result"
Mom to 3 gorgeous boys: Aiden (8), Nathan (7) and Dylan (4)
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Joined: Oct 2011
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Surely in your consitution (as it is in the WHO "rights of a child") is a clause about a child's right to an education? Nope. The best US constitutional argument for education rights we have is in the 9th Amendment, which can be paraphrased as, "Just because the constitution doesn't specifically say you have a right, doesn't mean you don't have it."
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Joined: Feb 2011
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Right-- and in addition, schools that try to swim against the tide need to be prepared to no longer have operating funds provided.
So yes, in that sense, it is quite easy to "shut down" a non-compliant school. Even from far away. Just quit signing the checks.
Schrödinger's cat walks into a bar. And doesn't.
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Joined: Apr 2010
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As painful as this sounds, at DD7's school every classroom has one or two kids that are in the room half-day with a dedicated para. These kids sometimes can do some of the work but DD complains that their artwork always comes out best because the para does it for them. Last year's special ed kid was nonverbal. Honestly, I would be disturbed by a high achieving/gifted magnet that did take these kids; the benefit of having them in the room at all seems to be purely to help them learn to mix socially in a mainstreamed society, and help the other kids react normally to severely disabled persons. In the autism world, we have a maxim: "presume competence." That is, you can't always tell on first glance or even a casual acquaintance what a person can do or understand. I'd say it's extra true for children. There exist, for example, gifted nonverbal autistics. Humans are uneven: lacking one particular skill or capacity does not mean there are no other skills or capacities, even really advanced ones, right there in the same person. Without other information, I'd choose to believe that the school folks have decided that nonverbal child is getting something real out of their experience in that classroom (because otherwise they wouldn't "inconvenience" the teacher by placing the child there). I would certainly not presume incompetence. This matters to me because presuming incompetence is often hurtful to people.
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Joined: Mar 2010
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What would happen if schools refused standardised testing? I believe something like this is going on in the Seattle area. I've not been following it closely, but it will be interesting to see how it plays out.
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In the autism world, we have a maxim: "presume competence." That is, you can't always tell on first glance or even a casual acquaintance what a person can do or understand. I'd say it's extra true for children.
There exist, for example, gifted nonverbal autistics. Humans are uneven: lacking one particular skill or capacity does not mean there are no other skills or capacities, even really advanced ones, right there in the same person.
Without other information, I'd choose to believe that the school folks have decided that nonverbal child is getting something real out of their experience in that classroom (because otherwise they wouldn't "inconvenience" the teacher by placing the child there). I would certainly not presume incompetence.
This matters to me because presuming incompetence is often hurtful to people. I apologize. When I volunteer in the classroom this child does not appear to make purposeful movements (aside from walking when the para guides their shoulders) or focus a gaze on things or people; it is hard to imagine what is going on inside a child's head when the child does not have access to any form of communication or even the usual sorts of body language. Now I am curious - I will watch more closely. Thank you for the reminder.
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Joined: Sep 2007
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AS long as parents and teachers keep playing the game it will continue. Take away the players or the big red ball and the game will end.
What would happen if schools refused standardised testing? The problem is a lot more complicated than just the testing. The tests are often badly written and the governments put too much of the wrong kind of emphasis on the results. But there are other problems, including bad textbooks, teachers who don't know the subject matter, and poorly though-out philosophies underpinning the US education system (e.g. "everyone can go to college" and "everyone can be proficient in every subject at age/grade level.") Our school system has a terrible problem with wishful thinking with respect to that last point.
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