Why 10th grade test?

[Arthur Hu <ArthurH@TANGIS.COM>]

Nobody knows the real reason why all these exit exams are
set at the 10th grade..

It's because in Marc Tucker's classic 1989 "America's Choice,
High Skills or Low wages" (www.ncee.org)

http://www.ncee.org/OurProducts/reports.html

which is the blueprint
for school to work and standards based education, the idea was
to award a 10th grade Certificate of Mastery, roughly modeled
after the German system where the middle tier graduates to go
on to a vocational apprenticeship after 10th grade. His idea
was to require all students who wished to get free 11th and 12th
grade education to pass "one high standard" for all, use the same
standard for college and vocational, and convert the last 2 years
of high school and the first two years of college (to be provided
for free for all CIM holders) into the "new" college, which would
give out a vocational certificate which would replace today's 4
year liberal arts degree.

The basis for the national school to work program is to require
all students to spend one day a week, or one semester, or one hour
a day, or some significant amount of class time on a job site as
apprenticeship, even for the college bound. The level of the CIM
on the other hand is set so that all are required to pass the
minimum requirements for a 4 year university.

So "all but the most
severely disabled" will be required to spend 1-2 years in vocational
training, and all will be required to take, and be proficient in
college prep courses.

Got that?

Some of us are lucid enough to realize this is completely totally
crazy, but our entire education system has bought into this model
hook, line and sinker.

-----Original Message-----
From: Karen Canty [mailto:kscanty@PACBELL.NET]
Sent: Thursday, June 08, 2000 2:11 PM
To: ARN-L@LISTS.CUA.EDU
Subject: Re: Teacher bashing in A+ land?


George,

That question has been asked here in Ca. around the high school exit exam.
If a student passes it in 10th grade (when they can take it for the first
time), why do they have to continue in high school.  Oh, of course, because
we have all these requirements to graduate - you know, actual classes.  But
I'm sure as soon as it starts, somebody will ask the question seriously -
someone like my son who would be out of there in a shot, if he could!

Karen

-----Original Message-----
From: Assessment Reform Network Mailing List
[mailto:ARN-L@LISTS.CUA.EDU]On Behalf Of George N. Schmidt
Sent: Thursday, June 08, 2000 10:08 AM
To: ARN-L@LISTS.CUA.EDU
Subject: Teacher bashing in A+ land?


In a message dated 6/4/00 7:35:29 PM, Joankaiser@AOL.COM writes:

<< The article
is entitled: Simsbury Parents: Let Their Be A's. It's no wonder that now
that
the parents in this community have the top scores on the CMT, they are going
after grades. Years of increased competition really can drive a system "off
balance." >>

Thank you Joan, for pointing out the obvious absurdity on the other side of
the color and class line in all this.

The propaganda behind much of this -- the "bankruptcy" of public schools, as
discussed by Bracey et. al. and well known to many of us -- still comes out
as teacher bashing, even at the "best" schools. Once the teacher (and
school)
bashing is institutionalized, things will get even worse. Last night at the
Chicago Teachers Union meeting, Sharon and I were selling papers at the door
and several teachers told me they are being pressured to change grades
because the children in question -- who did little or no work in class for a
semester -- did "well" on the TAP or ITBS tests. Think of what things will
be
like in another year.

Here in Chicago, we now have some "gifted" kids now asking why they have to
go to sixth and seventh grades, since their ITBS GE scores are already at
8.5
at the end of 5th grade. They watch the "non-gifted" kids (all as measured
by
the ITBS) crying and heading off to summer school and draw some very logical
and powerful conclusions. And how dare the child get below and "A" if Mr.
Vallas and our mayor say you are a genius if your scores are in the 95th or
99th percentile? What could a teacher possibly know to argue against logics
such as these?

The nightmares that lie ahead in these things are just beginning. With all
the worship of standardized test scores, sooner or later someone is going to
litigate on behalf of the kids who demand an "A" in 6th grade math simply
because they already "passed" the work with a GE of 8.2 on the math part of
the test.

It almost makes me glad I was exiled from my classroom for heresy for the
past year and a half. How can we keep teaching and demand our students do
any
work that's not circumscribed by these follish tests? One of the reasons I
preferred teaching in the poorer parts of Chicago is that I rarely had to
face parents who would tell me

(a) they were richer than I was, and therefore smarter;

(b) their kids drove better cars than I did, so how much could I know; and

(c) how dare I give their kid an "F" just because he turned in nothing but
doodles and one "term paper" covered with nose snot and God knows what other
substances as an entire semester's output.

I can't imagine trying to explain to a testblinded parent how the kid failed
my U.S. Literature class simply because she didn't read "The Catcher in the
Rye," "Huck Finn," "Grapes of Wrath," "Native Son" and "To Kill a
Mockingbird" during the past 20 weeks. What do I say after the mother calls
Mr. Vallas and points out that the kid scored in the 8th or 9th stanines in
"reading"?

This whole thing is going to ruin so many schools it will become the
embodiment of the real "rising tide" we were once fictively warned about.
The
nation is now at risk, but not from those of us who labored long and hard in
the classrooms of our schools.

And it will take a generation of kids to get back to respecting class work
and doing assignments for 180 days per year -- after we've licked the
standardized test beast. This makes the whole thing even more frightening
than I had imagined (and my imagination has been pretty good on firing
itself
up on the consequences of this nonsense).

If the Standardistos had a standardized test for virtue, the police wouldn't
be allowed to arrest anyone "at or above the national norm" on the Virtue
index, even if there were a dozen eyewitnesses to the crime. After all, the
argument would go, the VIRTUE tests "proved" that only the virtueless (those
in the lowest quartile) commit the majority of crimes.

AARGH!

George Schmidt

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