Re: NEA Today

[Peter Farruggio <pfarr@UCLINK4.BERKELEY.EDU>]

George,

Why the favorable article on TAAS?




At 11:56 PM 3/11/02, you wrote:

> Seven full pages of the March 2002 NEA Today, including ten separate
> articles or sidebars, address the new ESEA. Nearly half of this material
> reports or comments on the testing and accountability provisions of the law.
>
> Three of the best resources in this issue are:
>    * a Q & A with James Popham on "The Tests We Need and Why We Need
> Them," in which Popham summarizes his proposal for picking "a small
> number of absolutely essential standards to assess--maybe five or six in
> each subject." As he points out, "The federal law says the tests have to
> be aligned with the state standards, but it doesn't say they have to
> cover everything."
>    * the Nine Requirements for Useful State Tests (from the Commission on
> Instructionally Supportive Assessment)
>    * a Testing Timeline, graphically depicting what will happen between
> now and June, 2014, under the ESEA.
> On the other hand--despite a few sentences questioning the use of test
> scores to judge schools, the article on testing in Texas gives a generally
> positive review of TAAS and of federally-mandated testing.
>
> What impression of federal-state testing will readers take away from this
> issue of NEA Today? That might depend on the opinions they had formed
> before they began reading.
>
> George Sheridan
> 4467 Meadowbrook Road
> Garden Valley, California 95633
>
> "Hope is not a calculation. It's an action. It's more verb than noun."
> Frances Moore Lappe
> Author of Diet for a Small Planet and Hope's Edge
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