The principals are revolting against testing in NY

[woodsmoke]

I remember when I was paid very well to do a presentation on one of my programs for a significant number of principals in our fair state. The rep brought in this woman and asked if I would mind splitting some of my time with her.

I agreed that I had wondered why the time was rather longish and agreed.

The lady then "checked her schedule" and asked if I could let her speak first. I agreed.

Not to put too fine a point on it, she introduced herself to the principals and said in one short statement:

"The schools are failing the standardized exams because the tests do not match your books. If you want to pass the tests, buy your books from company XYZ. It will cost you about 11,000 dollars per grade per class. Either that or go buy the tests out of state, which every state but this one has a copy of, let the teachers look at them, not copy of course, and you can maybe pass the test that way which is a little bit intellectually dishonest but whatcha gonna do?" She then adjusted her glasses, smoothed the sleeves on her very natty suit coat and left.

Well.... the principals asked if I had been to the bar and I said yes, and they said that they thought that I had given one of the most wonderful presentations that they had ever heard and that they were going to recommend that I come back to give the same presentation again at a higher compensation.

Ya know, those guys can get really lit in a short period of time, and I was well lubricated also, we spent a great time watching football!

But back to the point of the post, apparently, somebody had a talk with principals in New York also! lol

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/...DuUO_blog.html

There is one, big, overwhelming reason why students can't pass the tests.

If the kids pass them and the parents acknowledge that their kid really can read and do math,

There is no more need for the tests or the bureaucracies supporting them.

woodsmoke

[SteveRiley]

Re: The principals are revolting against testing in NY

There is one, big, overwhelming reason why students can't pass the tests. If the kids pass them and the parents acknowledge that their kid really can read and do math, there is no more need for the tests or the bureaucracies supporting them.

I really don't want to believe this. I want to live in a happy bubble where our educational institutions are free of for-profit perversions.

But, I think you might be right.

[woodsmoke]

Re: The principals are revolting against testing in NY

I agree, but maybe things are a-changin'.

There used to be the "military industrial complex" paranoia of the libs and then it was the "education publisher industrial complex".

The latter was, and still is, correct.

As an example of the paranoia being correct, in my fair state we have one of the very first standardized tests that was actually produced that uses what is called "criterion reference". That means the student has to know "a fact".

That sounds benign enough until one goes a little deeper. If a student is cued on say..... Picasso as an artist and the test asks about Kandinsky, there is no way for the student to answer the question.

And that is what criterion reference questions do. They are not "read a paragraph" and extract information etc. In other words they are not "thinking skills" they are remember facts.

Now, given that, the exam in our state is NOTHING like what was actually produced by the teachers, and I know intimately because I was involved in the whole process.

It is produced now, by a textbook company. The textbook company also produces a "practice book". The principals and parents were NEVER going to go for one textbook in our state, like they do in others. So there is a practice book that has to be paid for and it "cues" the students on the questions and answers for the next year's exam.

Of course a new one has to be bought each year because the exam "changes" the next year but it only changes, basically, the "ordering" of the questions, and not the questions themselves.

However, that then leads to....welll if it is a lab class then one needs to coordinate with the science education companies to make sure that the experimental KITS match the textbooks.

And say, for art, one has to have videos that coordinate with the questions about art.

The libs were right on this one, it really is a education/publishing/industrial complex.

Beause the book company sells the tests to other states!!! OUR state is the only state in which the teachers's can't "see" the test. Now, if we used a test from "another state" then ...we could "see" it to have at least some small clue about what is on the test. there is the "justification" for the "study book".

And, it all got started into FULL SWING under Geo. Bush II.

Now, there IS one justification for it.

Back in Reagan's time he said, that a "man" would probably have 7 jobs in his lifetime.

What nobody thought abotu was that the family would probably have to MOVE 7 times also. From district to district.

The massive influx of Hispanics and the whole "anchor baby" thing has created a dynamic population of Hispanics which move from one part of the country to another.

At any one time, when I last taught high school, half of the Hispanic population ws moving in and out of the schools and the kids were all "legal" but "not" legal.

And since they are "legal" they have to be included in the testing scores.

Duuuuhhhhhhhh I wonder why "kids can't read" when they can't speak english to begin with but the school is held accountable anyway.

AND if the new school to which a man moving the family because of a job is studying biology and the previous school was studying earth science in the sophmore level then the kid that has moved is out of luck.

And you can forget about any kinds of "accomodations" or "statistical juggling". the test scores can be made to go up or down in the space of about one month.

This happened in our fair city last year. When the "state" said the school was "failing" in "reading and math" the power brokers called a couple of congress people and said fix this and suddenly there were statistical anomalies found and the scores went up in the space of a month.

The problem was not the "local kids" ....the state had "inadvertently" included the Hispanic transients and the learning disability students in the mix.

And they did it on purpose thinking that the parents would go along with it that the "schools are horrible"...

The parents klnow what is going on with their kids, their neighbor's kids etc. and are finally getting tired of it as exemplified by the man in the article.

thanks for the comment, because it is a sad, sad, thing

woodsmoke

[GreyGeek]

Re: The principals are revolting against testing in NY

Harvard recently released a report about the ranking of US students against other nations.

Proficiency in Mathematics
U.S. students in the Class of 2011, with a 32 percent proficiency rate in mathematics, came in 32nd among the nations that participated in PISA. Although performance levels among the countries ranked 23rd to 31st are not significantly different from that of the United States, 22 countries do significantly outperform the United States in the share of students reaching the proficient level in math. In six countries plus Shanghai and Hong Kong, a majority of students performed at the proficient level, while in the United States less than one-third did. For example, 58 percent of Korean students and 56 percent of Finnish students were proficient. Other countries in which a majority—or near majority—of students performed at or above the
proficient level included Switzerland, Japan, Canada, and the Netherlands. Many other nations also had math proficiency rates well above that of the United States, including Germany (45 percent), Australia (44 percent), and France (39 percent).

The USA is in a "Catch-22" situation in regards to academic proficiency and future job skills. After NAFTA was enacted manufacturing and highly skilled jobs were exported to countries where labor costs are 1/10th those in the US, and environmental regulations are non-existent. Then, our all-knowing Congressmen enacted H1B legislation which allowed corporations to IMPORT highly trained people to replace Americans at half the salary and few or no benefits, the Americans often training their replacements before being let go. To make matters worse, teams of lawyers traveled the nation holding seminars (for cash) to teach employers how to evade or violate discrimination laws by showing them how to advertize their jobs in such a way that they could draw the non-American workers and filter out the American workers.

The only high paying skilled jobs remaining in this country, requiring an advanced degree and certification, are lawyers, doctors, nurses and pharmacists. Technical trades like plumbers and electricians pay well, but without a manufacturing base there is no need for many welders, stationary engineers, machinists, etc.... So, after obtaining a college degree in the "Humanities" where are the new graduates going to work? Public or private schools? Those aren't "high paying" jobs. Many of the graduates will spend the next 30 years of their lives paying off the $100K+ school loans working at jobs that don't require their degrees and hardly pay more than minimum wage, with few benefits.

But, my remarks do not address the problem of American public schools failing to do an adequate job of teaching the majority of their students ANYTHING! Math, sciences, physical education, US history, civics (and the Constitution), personal hygiene, you name it. Poor teachers result from poor secondary teacher training programs which are saturated with PC dogma that filters out the non-compliant. During my 18 year stint in teaching it was my observation that in public schools half of the newly minted teachers quit after their first year because either they cannot control their students, they cannot teach, or both. Half of those that remained quit after their second year. And so it went. The turn-over was horrific.

In most states there is a policy called "dislocation", which allows a school board to assign up to 27% of their teachers to teach in disciplines they are NOT qualified to teach. Thus, coaches are hired because they have teaching certificates and are fired because they lose too many games. What they do in the classroom is immaterial, unless they are caught molesting one of the girls or boys. Most "teach" the sciences because school boards usually cannot find enough qualified science teachers. This is because most HS graduates going to college do NOT enroll in science or math courses because they are too "hard". They are too hard because the students were not expected to learn how to read, write or calculate at a level proficient for their grade level, even though some placed in the upper 10% of their HS graduating class. They could score that high because the standardized testing services have, over the years, lowered the bar, allowing poorly prepared students to achieve higher scores because the tests have become easier.

Personally, I never found a written test, even one I made up myself, that would adequately assess a student's knowledge of the subject matter I taught. Fill in the blank, multiple choice, word problems, essays, etc... All failed to plumb the depths of a student's knowledge in, say, chemistry. All but one, the oral exam. That's the method I used, and it took only 15 - 20 minutes per student, at a black board or computer. I'd start with "facts", in rapid fire... "what is Avogadro's Number?" "How many watts in one horse power?". Then I'd move on to concepts. Then extensions of concepts. If a student showed hesitancy in an area I'd probe deeper. During the last minute or two I'd compare what he or she showed me with what I expected them to understand, based on their own abilities, at that point in their training. Subjective? Sure. What test isn't? Culturally neutral? No. I don't care if it was normal in their home country for a student to bribe a teacher for a good grade.

Basically, we are in the midst of a lost generation or more of kids who, for the most part, know absolutely nothing about anything, except how to tweet, do facebook or play games on iPad. The future doesn't look bright. When those who are presently keeping things afloat retire or die off those replacing them will not be able to do the job. We are heading rapidly into a 3rd world status which will be dominated even more than it is now by greed, bribery and corruption, and it might take us centuries to climb back out, if ever. I am not optimistic.

[woodsmoke]

Re: The principals are revolting against testing in NY

Bravo!! GG!

Little hands clapping emoticon thingy here!!! (BTW we need to get one of those for the forum! )

When I was teaching HS, I knew when a student knew stuff and when they didn't because if they couldn't say it, they didn't know it!

Oral exam! yep!

woodsmoke

[SteveRiley]

Re: The principals are revolting against testing in NY

Basically, we are in the midst of a lost generation or more of kids who, for the most part, know absolutely nothing about anything, except how to tweet, do facebook or play games on iPad.

Every time my kids ask me something that I know they know how to find the answer for, I resolutely refuse to tell them. Instead, I remind them of the plethora of tools at their disposal for finding answers and engaging in more research. They pretend to be angry, but I'm certain they enjoy the exploration once they get started.

I figure my most important task as a parent is now not to feed facts into my kids' brains but instead teach them how to search, sort, and discern.

[GreyGeek]

Re: The principals are revolting against testing in NY

........
Every time my kids ask me something that I know they know how to find the answer for, I resolutely refuse to tell them. Instead, I remind them of the plethora of tools at their disposal for finding answers and engaging in more research. They pretend to be angry, but I'm certain they enjoy the exploration once they get started.

I figure my most important task as a parent is now not to feed facts into my kids' brains but instead teach them how to search, sort, and discern.

You nailed it exactly! You've heard the old saying, "Give a person a fish and you've fed them for a day. Teach them HOW to fish and you'll feed them for a lifetime."

I followed the same approach with my kids. "Sure, I know the answer to your question, but you'll have to find it the same way I did. That way you will remember it. Here's where you start...", while pointing to a specific book in my library. I never taught my kids what to think, but HOW to investigate, accumulate facts, form hypothesis and test them if possible. I didn't care what they wanted to learn about. Everything was on the table and open for discussion. There were no taboos or forbidden topics, except that I didn't permit vulgarity, slang, or pidgin English. I told them that I didn't hold my opinions on important matters lightly, and if they held a different view point, expect to be queried about them. Don't believe something because I believed it. Know WHY you believe what you believe, and that included religion as well. Your mother didn't hatch eggs and there are no parrots in this family.

My kids grumbled too, but they are both well employed and are raising their kids the same way. Grandpa helps in every way he can! (Yesterday I purchased an electronics kit for both of them for Xmas. We are going to do a lot of experimentation when they come over.)

[woodsmoke]

Re: The principals are revolting against testing in NY

+1 SR.

woodsmoke

[SteveRiley]

Re: The principals are revolting against testing in NY

Your mother didn't hatch eggs and there are no parrots in this family.

LMAO

(Yesterday I purchased an electronics kit for both of them for Xmas. We are going to do a lot of experimentation when they come over.)

Remember these? Ah, I miss mine still.

[img width=400 height=252]http://farm2.staticflickr.com/1398/773052449_f4378e0250.jpg[/img]

[HalationEffect]

Re: The principals are revolting against testing in NY

@SteveRiley

That's looks pretty much exactly like the electronics kit I had myself around 30-ish years ago! It may have had a different brand-name on it (I'm in the UK, so it was probably re-branded by whichever company it was that imported it), but otherwise the same. Fond memories

A year or so ago I tried to buy one for my son, but I couldn't find anything close to as good.

[SteveRiley]

Re: The principals are revolting against testing in NY

From Radio Shack, back before it was cool to SmashWordsTogetherWithoutSpaces. (Check their logo now.)

I also have been unable to find anything similar. I thought I found something last year, but my son -- who's no gorilla -- snapped the volume control knob off the spindle 10 minutes after unwrapping the box. Cheap plastic crap.

[HalationEffect]

Re: The principals are revolting against testing in NY

Now that you mention that yours came from Radio Shack... my home town used to have a Tandy store back in the 70s & 80s, so I'm betting that's where my parents got mine from.

[ScottyK]

Re: The principals are revolting against testing in NY

Back in the 80's our Chemistry Final in High School was to make gunpowder. The teacher put 15-20 items on the table, and told us to go for it.

We had to figure out what each item was, then weed out the items that were decoys. then figure out the proper ratio of the remaining items.

Then we had to write out the entire equation of WHY it worked.

You passed when he took his torch to your powder and it went up in flames.

He wouldn't help anybody, stating that he taught us everything during the year that we would know to complete this task.

And it was my favorite of all my finals to this day, because it truly tested whether we learned the material or not, because we had to put it into practice.

I wonder if kids these days in schools are even allowed to DISCUSS what gunpowder is.

[woodsmoke]

Re: The principals are revolting against testing in NY

The "final exam" for my general science class was that each student built a model rocket and had to write a paper on all the aspects of combustion, flight, some atmospheric science stuff, you name it.... they had to calculate altitude using trigonometry and a homemade "angle" measurer...copied somewhat after the Estes one..did it for twenty years and the kids loved it.

I probably could not do that nowadays, the kids might get hit in the eye with a rocket!

woodsmoke

[GreyGeek]

Re: The principals are revolting against testing in NY

Back in the 80's our Chemistry Final in High School was to make gunpowder. The teacher put 15-20 items on the table, and told us to go for it.
...

That's called "A Practical" and is the favored method of testing in lab classes.

When I took chemistry in high school I taught myself how to convert a nickel into a dime ... in a 50ml beaker place 1.85g of concentrated Nitric acid. Let it work until the reaction stops. When the acid is done the nickel was the size and weight of a dime and worked perfectly in the vending machines! I also made gun cotton, Nitroglycerin, Rayon, gun powder, zinc + sulfur rocket fuel, and many other things, but had more fun with Nitrogen Tri-iodide. I fell in love with chem, and because of the math and physics it required I became hooked on all the sciences. I worked every problem in my HS chemistry text book. When I took chemistry in college the prof had chosen the collegiate version of my HS chem book, and most of the problems were the same. Because of my good memory, when the prof would call on me to answer a particular question I'd immediately give the answer without hesitation. He was surprised and asked me the answers to several other randomly selected questions in the first chapter, which I instantly answered. He jumped to some questions in later chapters and I answered them as well. From that moment on I was known as "The Geek" to my classmates, except when they called me "Houdini" because I could hypnotize some people in as little as 30 seconds. I never understood that because Houdini never hypnotized people.

BTW, I stopped making dimes out of nickels when a man showed and asked my HS chem teacher if he knew how or where those defaced nickels were showing up. I was the student lab assistant at the time and I suspect that he suspected me, but he didn't say anything.

IF a kid made gun powder in school today he'd be branded a "terrorist" and punished for "terrorists activities".