Re: test dumber than curriculum - so change the curriculum

[aburke5054@aol.com]

I very much doubt that "educators" are telling parents that they are 
cheating on their children's tests, or ignoring their children, or 
teaching in ways that cause the children to engage in less thinking, 
because if they did parents would tell them to stop doing those 
ridiculous things and start doing the right things.  You can be sure 
that parents would not tell teachers and principals to keep on doing 
these things to their kids because it is all the fault of NCLB, George 
Bush, and the Business Roundtable.  These kinds of abuses won't go away 
if we stir the testing pot a bit - they will simply appear in other 
forms.  If we want to stop abuses of this sort, the most direct way is 
to give parents and kids more clout against the teachers and principals 
who are perpetrating them.  By continuing to claim that the problem is 
the tests and that such abuses are understandable, even inevitable, 
FairTest only acts as an enabler - and that is clearly against reason 
and common sense and the best interests of parents and kids.  And they 
keep doing it why?

Art

-----Original Message-----
From: QCao009@aol.com
To: arn-l@interversity.org
Sent: Mon, 20 Aug 2007 5:52 pm
Subject: Re: [arn-l] test dumber than curriculum - so change the 
curriculum


In a message dated 8/20/2007 5:28:34 P.M. Eastern Daylight Time,
monty@fairtest.org writes:

Really -  the educators should have just said we must dumb the kids 
down,
help them  remember more isolated "facts" and do less thinking, but 
that is what

is  expected of us.



This is what happens when the test itself is not "accountable".   
Bottom line
is the test is not to blame, or the law.  It is how the  law is being
used...it's amazing to now watch pre-planning for Dean coming  to 
Texas, when we
all
know the pre-planning should have happened for every  hurricane  
regardless
whether the state is blue or red, regardless whether  the city is white 
or
black.  It may not be a conspiracy, but the lack of  due care for all 
citizens
and
all children, regardless of race, gender, social  class and ethnicity,
absolutely REEKS.  To claim NCLB is moral is as bad as  claiming that
questioning
Iraq is unpatriotic.

Fish always rots from the top, and when you have lousy leadership, you 
have
faulty implementation.  We should waste less time discussing whether 
the
issue is implementing, full funding, saving, or scrapping NCLB.  We  
should
begin
talking ab having the right people at USDOE, in this  Congress and in 
this
White House before any change will happen Jan  09.

When education becomes a political process, it's time educators frame 
the
discussion politically and strategically instead of thinking politics 
is beneath

 us.  Otherwise we have a new law every 7 years, and the cycle of 
failure
self-perpetuates generation after generation.  If test-makers make test 
and
publishers publish texts and software developers develop programs, they 
all
should be allowed to make a profit, but not at the expense of the 
curriculum,
not
on the backs of children and families.

May be we should not have gone back and carried the sham  forward 
today.
This is not public education.  This is continuing  to socially promote 
W, a
failing student.

Quan





************************************** Get a sneak peek of the all-new 
AOL at
http://discover.aol.com/memed/aolcom30tour
-------------------------------------------------------
Subscribe ARN-L:
http://interversity.org/lists/arn-l/subscribe.html






________________________________________________________________________
AOL now offers free email to everyone.  Find out more about what's free 
from AOL at AOL.com.