Fwd: [ARN-state] Delaware Teachers: Students Are More than Test Scores

[Susan Harman <susanharman@igc.org>]

Begin forwarded message:

> From: Bob Schaeffer <bobschaeffer@earthlink.net>
> Date: Mon Aug 13, 2007  7:35:57 AM US/Pacific
> To: ARN Main List <arn-l@interversity.org>,  ARN State  
> <ARN-state@yahoogroups.com>, arn2-strategy  
> <arn2-strategy@yahoogroups.com>
> Subject: [ARN-state] Delaware Teachers: Students Are More than Test  
> Scores
> Reply-To: ARN-state@yahoogroups.com
>
> TEACHERS: TESTS DON'T DEFINE OUR STUDENTS
>
> The (Delaware) News Journal -- August 12, 2007
> by Alison Kepner
>
> As students return to class this month, Delaware teachers are spending
> big bucks to spread their back-to-school message: "A student is more
> than a test score."
>
> Last week, 44 billboards went up statewide, soon to have their message
> reiterated in a two-week radio spot that will hit the airwaves Aug. 20.
>
> Delaware State Education Association, the state's largest school
> employee union, will spend $49,000 on the campaign.
>
> The message is a shot at the federal No Child Left Behind law, now up
> for re-authorization. DSEA leaders' aim is to let families know that
> teachers know testing is not teaching and that testing is not learning.
>
> "Teachers in public schools are caring people who understand that the
> goal is students who are productive, hard-working, responsible citizens
> who live up to their potential," spokeswoman Pamela Nichols said in an
> e-mail. "Testing is a tool to evaluate teaching and learning -- it's  
> not
> the goal. But that is what it has become under NCLB."
>
> Frederika Jenner, a sixth-grade science teacher at H.B. du Pont Middle
> School in the Red Clay Consolidated School District, said it is an
> important message.
>
> "There has just been such an incredible focus on scores, on individual
> student scores, on class scores, on school scores, on using scores to
> prove or disprove a teacher's effectiveness," she said. "Ever since the
> first day I stepped in the classroom, I understood my accountability.  
> My
> greatest accountability is to those kids sitting in front of me and to
> their families.
>
> "Most of the teaching staff gets that and responds to it."
>
> "This focus on testing as the be-all and end-all, as the No. 1  
> indicator
> of the success of a student or the success of a teacher or the success
> of a school has distracted us," she said.
>
> Nichols said educators want students to love learning, not love being
> tested: "For many students, an overemphasis on testing will, in fact,
> kill their love of learning."
>
> http://www.delawareonline.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070812/ 
> NEWS/708120369/1006/NEWS
>
>
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