Re: Get your state's report card

["Alan Young" <alanyoung@mchsi.com>]

Yeah. Iowa gets another 'F' for our accountabilty. A badge of honor, since
of course we are accountable . . . TO THE CHILDREN! TO THEIR PARENTS IN
AUTHENTIC WAYS, like in our student-led, portfolio conferences. If our grade
improves in this area, you know that means the quality will go down for us.

Anybody ever take this bogus rating system to task for its flaws, faulty
assumptions in our journals? Anybody ever criticize the conservative slant
of Ed Week, especially by tying it to its conservative funding? Anybody ever
think of the irony of the title Quality COUNTS (a quantitative term for a
qualitative assessment). It only uses things it can COUNT. No wonder its so
reductionistic, bogus, and incapable of serving as a true instrument to
assess quality.

Assess the hell out of the assessors. Test the testers. Make them show how
their assessments relate to real world success and improvement before we
give them a dime more. Make the politicians realize how they are not being
accountable with funds they are entrusted with if they give it to these
snake oil salespersons, con artists, pseudo-scientific psychometric hocus
pocus magicians, profiteers. Don't let the attention on corporate scandal
wane. Tie our fight to it. Hold those accountable who are holding us
accountable. Expose them, reduce their hegemony by turning the mirror on
them. That's how you show the "emperor has no clothes" and deflate their
egomania. Give Bush and others these tests and publish the results. They
need a good dose of truth and exposure. Risky and ineffective to do it alone
. . . but together, systematic, via national strategies. . . a possibility,
hmm? Any commercials in mind to go with many other important, sustained
efforts? Let's OVERWHELM them.

I'd say I was salivating, if it wasn't for the connection to Pavlov's dog
and simplistic antiquated theories of learning and motivation. But I smell
raw meat. (I know this is diferent from my serious posts, but c'mon. There's
got to be a place for our passions!)

Alan