Fwd: [LiteracyForAll] Testing

[Susan Harman <susanharman@igc.org>]

Begin forwarded message:

> From: Yetta Goodman <ygoodman@u.arizona.edu>
> Date: Fri Feb 15, 2008  9:45:09 AM US/Pacific
> To: Literacyforall <LiteracyForAll@yahoogroups.com>
> Subject: [LiteracyForAll] Testing
> Reply-To: LiteracyForAll@yahoogroups.com
>
> Given what I know about basal readers and tests you'd think I'd be
> immune to being shocked by such things as are written below.  Anyone
> with contact to Obama and Clinton, Kennedy and Miller should send this
> on to them to raise questions and issues about the replicability and
> reliability of research on the testing that is being done to our
> students and their teachers and the authors of children and adolescent
> literature. I think this needs to be disseminated far and wide.  I need
> to check it myself on Amazon.com, I just received this from someone
> else.............
>
>
>
>
> Thought you would find this note (by Ann Cameron, author of many
> children's books, including "More Stories Julian Tells") of interest,
> posted on Amazon by Ann Cameron herself:
>
> "An excerpt from this book, about African-American characters, was used
> January 31, 2000, in a state-wide Illinois third-grade reading 
> standards
> test. 70,000 Illinois children got this test excerpt, in which the
> testers reillustrated the story without permission and changed the
> characters to Causcasians. I wrote the book with great care, and with
> the hope that many children will identify with my characters who are
> courageous and successful and well-liked. Over 200,000 copies of the
> book have been sold. I know from my fan mail that many children of all
> races do identify with the characters. It must have been painful for
> many of them to see their heroes turned white on a test--and for others
> who know the book, it must have been distracting at the least. One of
> the testers' three new illustrations shows the brothers in the story
> playing baseball. Eight books about the characters have been published
> to date (there will be a new one next year)--and in none of them do the
> characters play baseball. The testers developed their test questions
> based on a 3-page excerpt from the book; they had never even seen a 
> copy
> of the entire book (thus the error in race), much less read it. It's
> quite possible that a child who had read the book would give different
> answers to the test questions based on his knowledge, and that the
> testers, in their ignorance, would mark it wrong. In many states,
> statewide tests are very serious these days--children are stigmatized
> for low scores, and teachers lose their jobs. But it appears that the
> tests are hastily and thoughtlessly constructed and penalize good
> readers. Parents and all of us concerned with education need to know
> what kind of tests children are being subjected to. "-
>
>
>
>
>
> --
> Yetta M. Goodman
> Regents Professor Emerita
> University of Arizona, College of Education
> Language Reading and Culture - Room 532
> Tucson, AZ 85721
> Home Address
> 7914 S. Galileo Lane
> Tucson, AZ 85747-9609
>
>
>
> [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
>
>
>
>
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