Mothering › Forums › Education › Learning at School › What to do about all this manadory standardized testing...
New Posts  All Forums:Forum Nav:

What to do about all this manadory standardized testing...  

post #1 of 9
2/8/02 at 1:07am
Thread Starter 
Our school board just voted last year to test our kids every single year from 2nd grade on!

I got involved with trying to stop that (and just keep it at 3rd grade reading tests and tests in more subjects at 4th, 8th and 12th--which is state mandated), but the board listened to all the parents and teachers who were against it and went ahead and voted for it anyway. It was very disheartening, because it was obvious that someone had made the decision to go ahead, and it really didn't matter what anyone else had to say about it. Many on the school board here have the attitude that they have to save these poor children and that they certainly know better than any parent.

Then after I had my baby last March, I got too busy to keep up with the fight.

Well, now George W. is all for all this testing too.
What to do?
post #2 of 9
2/8/02 at 7:53am

Re: What to do about all this manadory standardized testing...

Quote:
Originally posted by 3girls1boy
Our school board just voted last year to test our kids every single year from 2nd grade on!
Why?

a
post #3 of 9
2/8/02 at 11:25am
Get your petitions together, if you haven't already. Also, identify about 5 candidates from among your group of anti-testers, and have them run for the school board. Then have your group actively support them. Then definitely vote. Make standardized testing a well publicized issue during the next school board elections and make sure to quiz each candidate (yours or not) about their stance. Then publicize it with lots of editorial letters and any free press you can get.
You can start writing those editorial letters now and getting press releases out to the local newspapers about why you oppose it. Put public pressure on the board.

Where are the current school board members coming from? Is this mandatory testing somehow being linked to state or federal funding? If so, that would put great pressure on any school board.
post #4 of 9
2/8/02 at 12:12pm
In my state (MD), we have so much school time wasted on preparing for and taking these stupid tests that there has been pretty widespread boycotting. The parents simply keep their kids home on test days. Absent students count as zero scores. It doesn't help make up for the uncounted wasted hours spent training the kids on useless info. needed to do well on these tests, but it does show the powers that be how the parents (and students) feel about these never-ending tests. All the zero scores make the end results pretty much useless.
post #5 of 9
2/8/02 at 7:47pm
Considering Bush's "No Child Left Behind" plan, there will be little that the local boards will be able to do. With federally mandated testing, you're going to have to address the powers that be a bit higher up than your local school boards.
post #6 of 9
2/9/02 at 10:27pm
Oh, I really like that idea of keeping your kids home on test days! What a wonderful way to do passive resistance/peaceful "demonstration!"
post #7 of 9
2/10/02 at 7:24pm
In CA kids aren't required to take tests -- though the schools never mention this fact.

But I suppose that is going to change with the new federal plan.
post #8 of 9
2/11/02 at 12:16am
Thread Starter 
Many on our school board are supported by those in favor of school choice (which is kind of like the board of Pepsi saying, "Let's give people coupons for free Coke." I don't get it.)

Anyway, last time two spots were up on the board, some better people were put up by some of these groups against testing, and they got in--Yay!--but now the board is almost evenly split and deadlocked.

So the reason they said they had to do all this testing is because they claim they need some way to linearly and sequenctially track individuals progress. (lots of big educational type terms are thrown around.) To which I said at one hearing, that talking with my child's teacher is going to tell me way more about how she is doing than some numbers on a piece of paper!

We only have one daily paper here in Milwaukee and the editors are very much against the Milwaukee Public Schools and have come out with editorial after editorial in favor of more testing. Like I said before, there is this prevailing attitude--"Oh those poor lower class children. Certainly their parents don't care and don't know anything about education or what is good for their own children! We must save them!" Ugh! It makes me want to barf (although of course, no one says this kind of thing out loud) The media always comes up with this by citing how many kids in the system qualify for free or reduced price lunch. Well, we do and it doesn't mean that we are uneducated and don't care about our kids.

Plus, (if I can just finish up my rant) none of the charter schools or private schools that receive school choice money have to give any of these tests!
post #9 of 9
2/11/02 at 7:16am
Sounds like these guys are trying to downgrade their school system to as low as the Japanese. But they have a long way to go yet. Weekly testing. Squewing the results. Re-testing "failed" students.

Your system in the US has long way to fall!

In fact, you will be surprised to learn that the Japanese see your public school system and charter schools as the way out for them!

The future.

A panacea for all the ills of the Japanese education system!

LOL

What a joke :

a
New Posts  All Forums:Forum Nav:
  Return Home
  Back to Forum: Learning at School
This thread is locked  
Mothering › Forums › Education › Learning at School › What to do about all this manadory standardized testing...