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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