Compare the stories on standardized testing and the No Child Left Behind Act.
MICHIGAN
Nov 30, 2007 - Fewer Michigan high schools made adequate progress last school year due to tougher testing standards. The main way Michigan measures progress of high school students is through the ACT-based Michigan Merit Exam, adopted along with the tougher standards. The new exam replaces the old Michigan Educational Assessment Program test.
Under the No Child Left Behind Act, all students are to be proficient in reading and math by 2014. Public schools must periodically test students to gauge their success, a measure called adequate yearly progress.VERMONT - Editorial in the Burlington Free Press
States are given some flexibility on setting their own standards for what constitutes adequate yearly progress...
Nov 30, 2007 - Some 100 people, many of them educators, showed up to a meeting with U.S. Senator Bernie Saunders, to rail against how No Child Left Behind is playing out in Vermont . schools.
Bernie Saunders is the only self-described Socialist in the U.S. Senate.No Child Left Behind works best when tests are used to figure out who needs what help. The accountability must start with making sure the students are offered the help.
The key is to keep No Child Left Behind from becoming the final word on student achievement, teacher performance or school success. Sanders knows how to choose a topic that hits home with Vermonters.
NORTH CAROLINA - Editorial in the Winston-Salem Journal
From an editorial called, Trim the Tests,
Standardized tests don’t measure whether a child is creative or imaginative. They measure only whether the child can spit back what the school has fed him or her. And, when standardized results are so important, then school curricula become tied to the tests. Teachers are told they must teach a structured curriculum in the way that school administrators demand.AND,
This is no way to learn and, more important, it is no way to engage the minds of youngsters and to make them want to learn.
Standardized tests don’t measure whether a child is creative or imaginative. They measure only whether the child can spit back what the school has fed him or her. And, when standardized results are so important, then school curricula become tied to the tests. Teachers are told they must teach a structured curriculum in the way that school administrators demand.A state commission has recommended eliminating the fourth-, seventh-, and 10th-grade writing, and the eighth-grade computer skills, tests. In addition, five end-of-course exams for high-school students may also be cut. That would leave only five.
This is no way to learn and, more important, it is no way to engage the minds of youngsters and to make them want to learn.
There’s even better news. Two science exams scheduled to begin this year, which are designed to meet the federal government’s obsession with testing, won’t be counted for state purposes.MARYLAND
Professors in the University Senate blasted a plan to bring national standardized tests to campus, saying yesterday that the proposal would undermine their lesson plans and restrict students' creativity
Last week, an association representing 430 public colleges and universities, including those in Maryland, voted to implement a standardized test that would make universities easier to compare. But professors in the senate, the university's most powerful policy making body, said they feared the test - at this point, only a pilot program - would steer the university's curriculum rather than faculty.The test would be given to randomly selected groups of freshmen and seniors and measure students' writing, math skills and critical thinking.
