Apparently the Lion of the Senate, Ted Kennedy, roared a little too loudly when he helped construct the "No Child Left Behind" legislation during the early Bush-43 years. For now, about ten years later, another Democrat reformer, The Barry, has declared this law too draconian and granted ten states exemptions to its provisions (with 28 more states to follow) -- another of the many examples of executive ukase under this regime. (See: L.A. Times Story). In announcing this one of his many end-runs around Congress, Obama declared that this attempt to increase students' proficiencies across our nation was "teaching to the test." This is precisely the same liberal canard that has been used in Massachusetts to deprecate the MCAS testing here (Massachusetts, of course, was one of the ten states granted a waver.)
And this is despite (or maybe "because of"?) the dramatic spending increases that Arne Duncan has enjoyed during his tenure aas head of the Department of Education -- $39.9 billion in his first year (fiscal 2009) with the President's budget calling for $68.0 billion in fiscal 2012 (see: Department of Education Spending and click on the Excel table). And I seem to recall the hoopla surrounding Duncan's appointment where his credentials and rhetoric suggested that his entire raison d'être was to improve the testing results of United States students. Apparently the air has gone out of this balloon ... to be replaced by a condom?
For more of my thoughts on this subject see: Duncan Donuts.
I cannot figure out - never have been able to - what is wrong about a) giving tests at the end of a learning period to determine what was learned and b) why it is wrong to teach to such tests. I will admit that the tests have to properly designed to actually test what was taught, but assuming that this is the case, why balk? Grade school and the lower reaches of high school, after all, teach the basics, reading, writing and math, right? Advanced poetry and esoteric theoretical physics obviously are difficult to test with a standard test . . . but we are not concerned with such subjects, are we.
ReplyDeleteGoing a little further afield from what your comments, I find it absolutely baffling why an enlightened teaching profession is sold on teaching basic information in native languages to new immigrant kids. We are handicapping these kids for the rest of their lives. Kids have amazingly elastic brains . . . put them into an English-speaking environment early enough and they will learn English.
Axel (a non-native English speaker)