Re: Can you answer this??

[Sandra <sandy821@LAVA.NET>]

Raising expectations (not standards) in school will hopefully result in
improved accountability on the job. That is what performance evaluations are
all about.
What we do in schools has a direct impact in the workplace. A lot of the
problems we experience today in the workplace are the result of what
happened in schools in the last generation.
Sandra
-----Original Message-----
From: Linda Seybold <seybold@IX.NETCOM.COM>
To: ARN-L@LISTS.CUA.EDU <ARN-L@LISTS.CUA.EDU>
Date: Thursday, February 01, 2001 1:29 AM
Subject: Re: Can you answer this??


>Because we as adults have failed our kids now we turn around and dump on
>them?  How many adults could stand the strain of having to take a test once
>a year
>at work, that may or may not have any direct correlation to the job they
>do, that would determine their raise or promotion or if they even have a
>job at all?
>
>----- Original Message -----
>From: "George N. Schmidt" <Csubstance@AOL.COM>
>To: <ARN-L@LISTS.CUA.EDU>
>Sent: Thursday, February 01, 2001 6:02 AM
>Subject: Re: Can you answer this??
>
>
>In a message dated 1/30/01 2:04:47 PM, jmward@QWEST.NET writes:
>
><< How would YOU respond to the snip of our district's e-mail below?
>
>
>snip
>
>
><<I understand your frustration and agree that the WASL is a high stakes
>
>assessment.  High stakes tests are a part of our students' lives.  Many
>
>young people take the SAT test, Civil Service test, the Graduate Record,
>
>or even the drivers tests.>>
>
> >>
>
>February 1, 2001
>
>Hello ARN:
>
>I'm hoping to reduce my postings, but a lot of new people are getting the
>old
>run-arounds, and we have to continue to share. Someone should post a
general
>reminder that people should go to the Fair Test and NCTE (National Council
>of
>Teachers of English) Web sites with some of these questions. At this point,
>I
>carry around the NCTE "talking points" wallet card "My Child Is More than a
>Test Score," and it helps. These are legitimate questions that are posed by
>honest people after they get some dishonest nonsense from the Testocracy.
So
>if it takes us a million repetitions of the facts and the truth, we have to
>resign ourselves to that.
>
>www.ncte.org
>
>wee.fairtest.org
>
>My answer to the Testocratic answered (since we don't go off and become
>righteously angry, either in a biblical or Old Wild west sense at such
>condescending jargon) is...
>
>Every "high stakes" assessment or test that is listed in this part of the
>bogus argument for school- and district-based high stakes tests is
voluntary
>and generally taken by people above the age of thirteen. No one has to take
>the SAT, GRE, civil service examination, etc. Most of the items of those
>tests are released after the tests are given so that those who wish to take
>the tests can review them. All of those tests are privately administered,
>although some are required (or considered) by government agencies for
>certain
>activities.
>
>Let's clarify that we are talking about government high-stakes tests
>administered in public schools where the results of the tests are made
>public
>but the tests themselves are generally kept secret.
>
>This is a simple but very important first point. All a child has to do in
>most places where high stakes tests are used is go to a private school
>and --
>"Bingo!" -- no more high stakes. Should the price of attendance at a public
>school really be that the child be subject to nine years of high-stakes
test
>interruptions in her life and education? This is what the Testocracy has
>foisted upon us while we weren't looking and they were chattering away and
>sending out their propaganda.
>
>What they were saying is: "Don't you want standards?"
>
>What they did was strap every state's public schools into a procrustean bed
>of high-stakes secret tests. We spend so much time listening to what
they've
>been saying that we ignored what they are doing. What they are doing is
>testing children and screwing up the educations, lives, and futures of
>children. In some places (like Chicago since 1997, when seven high schools
>were reconstituted), they are also firing teachers and principals based on
>the same sorry stuff.
>
>The high-stakes tests our sophistical Washington Testocrat is defending
here
>are involuntary.
>
>They are being foisted on children from a very young age without (a)
>parental
>permission, (b) review of the test in the open and in public once it has
>been
>given, (c) any democratic debate over what its use is eliminating from the
>schools.
>
>When public schools use high-stakes tests, they are being imposed by the
>government. When they are used involuntarily on children as young as seven
>or
>eight, they are being used in a ridiculous manner that can be dangerous.
>
>Most importantly, for all their claims, the high-stakes tests we're
>discussing here on ARN are unproved.
>
>This is like testing medicines in the open market on everyone in the
>population. Despite all of the claims that the "standards" are OK and the
>tests are "aligned" with the "standards" and that will result in "better
>schools" -- all of these things, when viewed up close, are lies.
>
>The "standards" generally bear little or no relation to the tests that
>measure them, and the notion that better test scores indicate we have
>"better
>schools" is the general subject of most of the discussion here on ARN.
>
>No let's consider "The Volvo Effect" from a few analogous angles. "The
Volvo
>Effect" is the fact that test scores on standardized tests reflect the
>wealth
>of families. The more families in a school that can afford Volvos and
>Lexuses
>(Lexi?), the higher the test scores. Imagine if the government were to
issue
>driver's licenses based on the same standard. You can take the driver's
test
>if your private automobile is of a certain "quality" or better. If not, you
>can't take the test. It's a high-stakes prerequisite to becoming a licensed
>driver.
>
>Similarly, because very few wealthy families "fail" high-stakes tests,
>wealth
>has become the door to public school "success." Whever high-stakes tests
are
>used, the wealthier schools have great success, and the poorer ones have
>less
>or little. But if the propaganda machine works, the poor schools are blamed
>for poverty, while the wealth effect on the richer schools is either
ignored
>or praised. We have reached the point in Chicago, for example, where a map
>overlay showing the "best" and "worst" schools based on ITBS and TAP scores
>would reflect dollars as precisely as any other standardized test. But all
>of
>the media and most of the professors are in league with Chicago's political
>and educational leaders in lying about that simple fact. So the discussions
>here are really in never never land.
>
>I have a lifetime of personal experience with this.
>
>In fact, some of the best schools I worked in during my 30 years in
>Chicago's
>inner city had the lowest test scores. The kids came to us with very low
>test
>scores, since, given "The Volvo Effect" (you can predict test scores based
>on
>ZIP code, wealth being the most significant factor) they were the poorest.
>The scores might go "up" (they almost never went "down") when the kids were
>in our schools (I taught full-time in 17 inner city Chicago public high
>schools before Daley administration, Chicago CEO Paul Vallas, and the
>Chicago
>Board of Education began the process of firing me two years ago) they
>improved in many areas, including literacy and numeracy.
>
>But the children who attended Bowen High School, where I most recently
>taught
>(October 1993 - February 1999) had many problems which made test scores the
>most ridiculous way to measure their success or the school's success. For
>example, during the three years before (white, privileged) Columbine High
>School became a brief national obsession, more than a dozen of our students
>were murdered in gang violence outside (often near) Bowen High School. In
>Chicago's inner city, the Columbine is ongoing, but ignored. Between August
>1997 and June 1998, seven of our present (or recently graduated or dropped
>out) students died, murdered. I only watched of them die myself, but I knew
>all of the others because I had been working in gang security as well as
>teaching English.
>
>To maintain that Bowen's test scores should be as "high" as those of
>Chicago's wealthier suburbs (or wealthier communities) is simply
ridiculous.
>And to maintain that Bowen's teachers and students should organize their
>school to raise test scores to make our mayor and politicians look good is,
>under the circumstance of the inner city today (and of the ground level
>horrors of the politicians' drug hypocrisies and "welfare reform"
>viciousness) something that should enrage everyone with ears to hear and
>eyes
>to see.
>
>Our children were doing very well in that traumatic reality. Our teachers,
>too.
>
>Instead of holding "accountable" the society that created such realities,
>society blamed the victims and got away with it through "standards and
>accountability" based on high-stakes tests.
>
>Justice will one day be done.
>
>George Schmidt
>
>
>
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