My own education rant ( Re: Reading, Writing, and Multiple Choice)

melclaros melclaros at yahoo.com
Wed Mar 5 01:30:38 UTC 2003


--- In HPFGU-OTChatter at yahoogroups.com, "Richelle Votaw" 
<rvotaw at i...> wrote:



Yet the government is perfectly content to continue supporting these 
people without doing anything to help them better their lives and 
become more productive citizens and better parents.  While still 
comparing the scores of my students, whose parents have an 8th grade 
education to those in the lab school, whose parents have PHD's.   


....and may I add....

IN the case of FLORIDA, the State Gvt. is using those hugely 
disparate test scores to FINANCIALLY (yes, actually hand out MONEY) 
reward the schools in the state that perform the best on these tests. 
These idiots don't seem to be able to get it through their heads that 
SCHOOLS don't take tests, CHILDREN do. A child who has come to school 
from a home (in the broadest sense of the definition--Florida is a 
migrant state) such as what you've described in your district can not 
possibly perform at the same level on the same test given on the same 
day as a child from a stable environment who has had a good night's 
sleep, a good breakfast, a leisurely ride to school in Mom's 
Navigator and who's been exposed to books and been read to 
consistantly since babyhood. 
TRUE EXAMPLE: FL is testing this week, the Infamous FCAT. A 4th grade 
teacher came into the lounge Monday afternoon looking for a newspaper 
and asking if anyone had heard anything about anyone being shot. It 
seems one of her students' Father/Uncle/SignificantMaleRoleModel had 
been shot and killed during a botched robbery attempt the previous 
evening (we're still not sure in which end of the robbery he was 
involved). How do you think THAT 9 year old's  test score is going to 
stand up to one of his cohorts in one of the more affluent counties? 
Couldn't he be excused? Well yes, but you see, we lose "points" if we 
have less than 100% participation in the test. That would decrease 
the amount of our check next year when the results come out. And, you 
understand of course, if *that's* the sort of student we have to rely 
on taking the test at our school for OUR GRADE (Did I mention FL 
schools are graded? Based on this test?) then we damned well need 
every "point" we can get, don't we?
Makes me ill, it really does. There has GOT to be a better way! We 
were tested in school. We took all sorts of standard tests. Multiple 
choice bubble sheets, blue book essays, IOWAS, Regents, ACTS, and 
SATS. They were used to assess US. OUR Individual progress. They were 
not used as political tools!

Melpomene--it's not the test, it's the testers!






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