Reply to PARCC monitoring student's social media, wants schools to "punish" them

Forum Index » Schools and Education General Discussion

Reply to "PARCC monitoring student's social media, wants schools to "punish" them"

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous][quote]If high-stakes tests have not led to improvement by now, will they ever? Two important factors suggest that even if they could in theory, they won't in practice.
Socioeconomic effects. Low-income and African American and Latino students enter school substantially less prepared to do academic work than their middle-income (never mind wealthy) or white or Asian peers (Lee & Burkam, 2002). In addition, the first group attends schools that are far less prepared, in terms of teachers and physical resources, to teach them. Rothstein (2002) points out the vast disparities in housing, health care, and other supports available to children. Those who start with less get less, and as a result they either fail to catch up or fall even further behind. Without major social investments in both classroom and out-of-school supports for low-income children, it is absurd to believe that more tests will enable schools to overcome the gaps in academic learning.
Several reports over the past few years have purported to show that large numbers of schools serving low-income students have succeeded in overcoming the effects of poverty. More careful studies, however, have shown these claims to be at best wildly inflated and often completely misleading (Krashen, 2002). Simply demanding higher scores, even with rewards and sanctions attached, will not do the job.
Teaching to the test. Any exam can only sample the curriculum that students should learn. For test results to be valid measures of real learning, students must have been taught a full curriculum. If instruction narrows to focus on the limited sample covered by the test, scores become inflated and misleading. This largely explains the difference between results on state-specific tests and those on such neutral measures as the NAEP.
Many supporters of test-driven “reform” argue that it will at least guarantee that teachers teach the basics (which the test will supposedly cover), and will thereby initiate a positive reform process. Unfortunately, test-driven schooling often fails to provide even the basics. For example, some reading teachers teach students to “read” by looking over the answer options to questions attached to short reading passages and then searching the passage to find a clue for selecting the answer. Others drill phonics, but never get to comprehension. As a result, independent evaluators find that the students cannot explain what they have just read—meaning they actually cannot read (McNeil & Valenzuela, 2001).[/quote]

More from the above article.

Unfortunately it is often in the lowest scoring schools that test-driven teaching goes on.  Why?  Because those students are so far behind that there is desperation to do anything to make the scores higher.  The staff in those schools know that there is no chance of passing if authentic teaching is used.  Their only chance is to game the test.  Those very students who are supposed to be "helped" by the NCLB rules are the ones truly left behind.  The tests are a bother and a waste of money for schools where most students are ahead anyway.  [/quote]

Options

	Disable HTML in this message
	Disable BB Code in this message
	Disable smilies in this message

Review message

Search Recent Topics Hottest Topics