Re: Fear Based Education as the Testing Season Starts

[MONICALUCIDO@comcast.net]

I find it entertaining that she calls it the "Testing Season", as if it were dome sort of hunting expedition. Maybe it is for the corporate politicos; they seem to enjoy hunting kids.  Everyone consider this. Is it possible that the 10% cut in education funding is another set up for schools to fail (especially at this critical time)? Is it possible that taking away the little resources we have to help these struggling students, in a year when the NCLB AMO's in math and ELA will climb by approximately 10%, is intended to put so much pressure on us that parents have no choice but to leave public schools? I am sure that it is only a start , as the governor's "blue ribbon" team suggests that merit pay be introduced here in CA, which will create even MORE focus on testing. They can cut the budget by 10%, and YET----AND YET !!!!--they still have the funding to pay for the milions of dollars in standardized testing costs?! People are losing their jobs. What the hell is going on here? Why 
are districts not unifying and standing up to this garbage? Good for Claudia for stating truth to power. DEFIANCE is the only answer at this point.

Joe Lucido
Educators and Parents Against Test Abuse
Fresno
 -------------- Original message ----------------------
From: Free2teach1@aol.com
>  
> Published on Sunday, March 16, 2008  by _the Santa  Cruz Sentinel 
> (California)_ (http://www.santacruzsentinel.com/ci_8593594)   
> Fear-Based Education as the Testing Season Starts
> by Claudia Ayers
> 
>  
> Next September, teachers like me will face hours of meetings considering  
> mountains of data, derived from rounds of testing that our students â?? and we 
> â??  
> must now endure. In the fall, we will no longer have the students whose scores 
>  we will analyze, but what else are you going to do with the data, besides  
> publish it in the local papers and wonder why the mathematically challenged  
> gloat with the up-ticks, and feel shamed by the downturns? 
> The confused and erratic sophomores we now attempt to teach have had scripted 
>  education since first grade, when whole language reading programs and â??fuzzy 
>  mathâ?? were rejected and all too often replaced with worksheets that were 
> guided  by scripts that teachers simply read. Additionally, since the 2001 No 
> Child Left  Behind Act, these students have had endless practice rounds for 
> standardized  tests. They know how to bubble in answers, but have limited 
> ability 
> to ask  questions, and seem so much less interested in understanding their 
> world than  the students who preceded them. 
> All school children and youth now carry many burdens: content standards,  
> measurable objectives, rigor, accountability, school-wide pacing, subject  
> breadth [mile wide, inch deep], proficiencies in bunches-of-facts, homework in  
> the 
> primary grades, skills drills and practice tests, fewer high school  electives 
> but more math support classes, heavy backpacks and exit exams. These  are the 
> fruits of fear. 
> Gone are the days of true engagement and authenticity, when emerging goals  
> included such things as integrated- and systems-learning, concept development  
> and global citizenship. Other things being left behind: field trips, democracy 
>  in action, age-appropriate curriculum [everything is hurried], project 
> choices,  recess, problem solving, team building, discussion, teachable moments,  
> student-taught lessons, inquiry, discovery, inductive thought, art, music,  
> teachers teaching to their strengths, freedom, or even â?¦ joy. 
> No wonder kids are dropping out in record numbers. The kinds of things that  
> lead to wisdom and ideals are steadily being eradicated, and if the people who 
>  should know better donâ??t start standing up, valued public education will,  
> simply, be irrevocably lost. Private school enrollments steadily increase. 
> Kids were prompted to think in the â??fuzzy mathâ?? days; the math skills were  
> embedded in rich problems [not on drills and work sheets]. Whole language 
> sought  to offer children the rewards of rich literature â?? public confusion 
> about  
> imaginary battles between phonics and sight-word advocates aside. There is a  
> difference between authentic reform efforts and the so-called reforms that 
> NCLB  has wrought [or is it rot?]. 
> Should every high school student really be required to take three years of  
> college preparatory high-school courses in order to graduate [as is required in 
>  many local schools]? Or is this just another way to force kids with lower  
> testing abilities to drop out so those who remain will produce higher Academic  
> Performance Indices? 
> When your school administrators and board members keep telling you their main 
>  goal is â??improving student achievement,â?? that is the first clue they have  
> uncritically accepted fear-based education. The joy of learning and creativity 
>  are not measurable. 
> Granted, true graduation rates and satisfaction surveys could give some  
> useful data. But basing â??achievementâ?? almost exclusively on standardized 
> test  
> scores is astonishingly nearsighted. 
> Honestly, I have seen hundreds of standardized test questions, and educated  
> people would be appalled by their quality. That the testing companies 
> regularly  rack up errors in scoring is also a little known facet of the 
> industry that 
> is  taking hundreds of millions of dollars away from U.S. classrooms. 
> The High School Exit Exam [HSEE] has just been given to all of Californiaâ??s  
> 10th-graders [March 11 and 12]. Most of our students will â??pass.â?? The ones 
> who  do not pass are likely to have a different first language, have testing 
> anxiety,  or have a learning disability. Sure, they have more chances to pass, 
> but anxiety  cranks up with each â??try.â?? Each year there will still be 
> thousands 
> of great kids  in California who will not receive a diploma and will not walk 
> at graduation.  Sadly, these are the students who will be most devastated by 
> the missed  opportunity. 
> Then in April, all students from second through 11th grades take another  
> enormous battery of California Standards Tests [CSTs]. The dollars and hours  
> thrown at this enterprise is insane, especially given that 20 percent of the  
> school year remains, yet students are evaluated on how they did for yearlong  
> course standards. 
> My college-age daughters were not subject to the HSEE and I opted them out of 
>  the CSTs. They tell me that were they still in high school they would not 
> take  the HSEE as a form of civil disobedience, even if it meant they could not 
> walk  at graduation. They say they wouldnâ??t want to shake the hands of adults 
> with  hardened hearts who did nothing to prevent this test from devastating 
> the lives  of our most vulnerable students. 
> While I love the idea that students would seek justice by protesting the  
> HSEE, it is the appropriate role of adults to protect children from poor policy  
> decisions by standing up and unconditionally loving children, not only their  
> own, but all children. Tax dollars are precious; they should not be used to 
> make  profits for test companies. Nor can we afford the countless hours and 
> dollars  devoted to prepare for and administer these pathetic tests. 
> Claudia Ayers is a teacher at Aptos High School. 
> C
> 
>  
> Judy  Rabin
> 
> Given the existence of an idealized vision of the community,  movements of 
> protest are likely to occur within the political nation when the  discrepancy 
> between the image and the reality comes to seem intolerably  wide.
> 
> --   J.H. Elliott
> 
> 
> 
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