Re: Two Setbacks for State Graduation Tests

[Free2teach1@aol.com]

In California, Judge Robert Freedman of Superior Court in  Alameda County 
said in a preliminary ruling on Monday that the exams, standardized math 
and English tests that high  school seniors have to pass to graduate, 
discriminated against impoverished  students and students learning English.

Yes, in theory  they have control - how about reality? What if that theory is 
flawed? The  assumptions on which this legislation was built are seriously 
flawed and  downright destructive. Do administrators and teachers in the most 
impoverished  schools and neighborhoods that Kozol describes really have 
"control" over how  their students perform on a standardized test?  
 
Discrimination through the use of standardized testing is  discrimination - 
period. You don't have to be a lawyer or a Constitutional legal  scholar to 
recognize that. 
Standardized testing is inherently discriminatory - just look at the  scores 
and the correlation to family income. 
 
What path is better? challenging it on the grounds that it is not funded?  
more funding for more tests? 
No thank you.
 
Judy
 
 
 
 
In a message dated 5/10/2006 12:54:07 P.M. Eastern Standard Time,  
kber@earthlink.net writes:

no,  logic of California exit exams as to unconstitutionality would not 
appply  to
NCLB.  The consequences for exit exams is that students do not  graduate -- a
student is potentially suffering because of something over  which s/he has no
control, the amount and quality of education s/he  receives. But in NCLB what 
you
have is a condition of receiving  Federal aid, directed at schools, who are 
judged
on an issue for which in  theory they have control.   The situations are  not
comparable. I don't like NCLB, but this is a false path. Kenneth  
BernsteinEleanor
Roosevelt HSGreenbelt MD






Judy  Rabin
Monmouth University

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