Against standardized testing

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I don't think it's hypocritical not to want your own kid be taught to the test, yet look at test scores to estimate the percentage of high achieving kids, since it's the only data available to get some glimpse at academic performance of a student body. The only possible proxies for this data are SES and race, which are obviously problematic to use.

I wouldn't look at test scores as a measure of school quality, but as a rough indicator of the quality of the students. Minute differences are meaningless, like those between various WOTP elementaries, but it does give you the big picture regarding the peer group, FWIW.

None of what you said tracks logically.

1) Yes, it is absolutely hypocritically to object to testing for your kid but to rely on it as some sort of reliable arbiter of school quality. Absolutely. It's worse that hypocritical -- it'd deplorable.

2) Yes, SES and race are proxies for good schools. No, it's not "obviously problematic to use." God's honest truth is upper middle class white-majority schools tend to be better. Simple as that. Pretending otherwise is disingenuous.

You are misreading. I'm not objecting to my kid being tested, I object to her being subjected to teaching to the test. I don't have a kid in a testing grade yet, but I don't think we will opt out. I also did not say that test results are a "reliable arbiter of school quality". In fact, I explicitly said that I do NOT look at it as an indicator of school quality. I do look at it to get a rough, i.e. imprecise sense of the academic potential of the students, and I certainly do NOT consider it the primary measure of whether my kid would thrive at the school. Given that the data is available, I don't think looking at it in this way, for what it's what it's worth, is either hypocritical nor - what an overreaction - deplorable.

And yes, SES and race are problematic proxies, because while by and large upper middle class white kids perform best on standardized tests, there isn't a perfect correlation that allows you to deduce academic performance from demographics, and assuming that every majority minority school will have low academic performance is indeed problematic and racist. (SES is a better proxy, I'll give you that.)

Now go work on your own reading comprehension.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I've noticed a lot of complaints about standardized testing here.

Yet you all seem to value test scores and Great Schools ratings pretty highly (which are based on test scores).

A bit hypocritical no?

No. Not for us but we are Asian. Prefer PARCC over SOLs too since PARCC is more comprehensive and harder than SOLs according to friends whose kids have taken both.

I have a kid in a testing grade and I like the fact that it keeps the school accountable and is an objective test. Also, I don't particularly care about the school's overall scores since my kid gets tested and I care about his scores.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I don't think it's hypocritical not to want your own kid be taught to the test, yet look at test scores to estimate the percentage of high achieving kids, since it's the only data available to get some glimpse at academic performance of a student body. The only possible proxies for this data are SES and race, which are obviously problematic to use.

I wouldn't look at test scores as a measure of school quality, but as a rough indicator of the quality of the students. Minute differences are meaningless, like those between various WOTP elementaries, but it does give you the big picture regarding the peer group, FWIW.

Did you say that? Children are either low quality or high quality? Children? You are racist AF & classist AF!

I'm a new poster and I think this is an over reaction. I thought the OP meant that some kids are just better students than others. Which is a completely reasonable statement, and in my opinion, obviously true as well.

Yes, thank you. I also realized after I posted that the way I said it might be taken the wrong way. I wasn't talking about the "quality" of the kids as human beings.

We're laughing at the people who jumped down throat. I'm sure they consider themselves intelligent, but their reading skills put them in the sam group no one would want their kids in a class with

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I've noticed a lot of complaints about standardized testing here.

Yet you all seem to value test scores and Great Schools ratings pretty highly (which are based on test scores).

A bit hypocritical no?

No. Not for us but we are Asian. Prefer PARCC over SOLs too since PARCC is more comprehensive and harder than SOLs according to friends whose kids have taken both.

I have a kid in a testing grade and I like the fact that it keeps the school accountable and is an objective test. Also, I don't particularly care about the school's overall scores since my kid gets tested and I care about his scores.

The only school in the city with enough Asian kids to pull out their test scores by subgroup (25+) is Deal. Elsewhere, your Asian kid's scores essentially disappear into a vortex (even YuYing doesn't have more than two dozen Asian kids in the testing grades). How does that keep a school accountable? Accountable to whom for what? To Pearsons Education, to make their CEO and shareholders a tad richer on your tax dollar?

We're Asian and we're opting out. Kids is spending PARCC testing days, and make-up days, honing advanced skills in very difficult Asian language with grandparents. Much more useful activity.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I've noticed a lot of complaints about standardized testing here.

Yet you all seem to value test scores and Great Schools ratings pretty highly (which are based on test scores).

A bit hypocritical no?

No. Not for us but we are Asian. Prefer PARCC over SOLs too since PARCC is more comprehensive and harder than SOLs according to friends whose kids have taken both.

I have a kid in a testing grade and I like the fact that it keeps the school accountable and is an objective test. Also, I don't particularly care about the school's overall scores since my kid gets tested and I care about his scores.

The only school in the city with enough Asian kids to pull out their test scores by subgroup (25+) is Deal. Elsewhere, your Asian kid's scores essentially disappear into a vortex (even YuYing doesn't have more than two dozen Asian kids in the testing grades). How does that keep a school accountable? Accountable to whom for what? To Pearsons Education, to make their CEO and shareholders a tad richer on your tax dollar?

We're Asian and we're opting out. Kids is spending PARCC testing days, and make-up days, honing advanced skills in very difficult Asian language with grandparents. Much more useful activity.

Just FYI, BASIS has enough kids to pull out scores by subgroup as well.