The Florida League of Women Voters released a statement today detailing the constant revisions to the school accountability system from 2011-2015. Over and over, the legislature and the Department of Education have tried and failed to get it right. It is more than a problem with a test. School grades, teacher evaluations, scoring of exams, and student passing rates all are constantly changed. It reminds me of the expression: ‘You can’t make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear. It is time to change direction if we want to improve our educational system.
Read the statement. It is Time to Focus on Teaching, Not Testing. Send it everywhere.
Bravo! Well researched, well said, Carol. Now is the time to contact our politicians, not to request that they loosen their unworkable stranglehold on our district public schools, but to demand it.
Our district posted the press release on its website, facebook etc. It would be good to contact your district also.
The great recession bailout gave Sec. of Ed. Arne Duncan $5 billion in discretionary money, dollars he used to create the “Race to the Top” program. He encouraged states to compete by establishing 4 criteria that states had to meet to qualify for much needed education funding: better data, more charter schools, higher standards (i.e. the common core), and test based accountability. That last innocuous sounding phrase means relying heavily on student test scores to judge and perhaps fire teachers.
Arne spent $5 billion to promote school closings (mostly in black and hispanic communities), to encourage the opening of more privately managed charter schools, despite the number of scandals associated with their deregulation and lack of oversight, and to make standardized testing the most important ends and means of education.
He will go down in history as the only snake oil salesman in the history of USDOE. Unfortunately, the five billion dollars was not only squandered, but did incalculable harm to students, educators, and public schools. He has no background in education other than running a charter school in Chicago.
Just imagine if he had used that power differently? What if he had told states that they would be evaluated in their commitment to science, art and music? To project based learning? To exploring Community Schools? HE WOULD NOT BE GOING OUT ON A BANNA PEEL and the money would have been well spent.