I may have some more thoughts about this later, but apparently statistical analysis indicates cheating across the nation.
Since funding is based upon these tests and teachers evaluated based on them, what do you expect?
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March 26, 2012 at 7:24 pm
AG
The largest indicators of student achievement are income level and the education level of the parents. Put your kid in a low income school, and if the kid has wealthy educated parents, the child is likely to excel.
This indicates that poor student performance is a societal problem, not a widespread problem with our schools. The reasons are many why wealthier families have students who learn better — parents have more free time for enrichment (maybe even a stay-at-home parent), more likely to be sure the child does his homework (and more likely for the parent to understand the homework), more likely to have time for library trips, more likely to have purchased books at home, more likely to have a rich vocabulary spoken around the home, less likely to have a broken home / drug home / abusive home, etc. etc. etc.
March 26, 2012 at 7:29 pm
AG
Oh, and considering that more than half of America is low income, well, go figure. By and large, our schools are fine. The problem exists in students’ homes.
The problem schools have is that they’re being starved of funding in a gambit to declare them failures, privatize them and eliminate the teacher unions (and maybe introduce school prayer and Christianize the curriculum). California is a special epidemic case where the state budget has led to 8 straight years of budget cuts. California schools are being cut to the bone. A few have even declared the equivalent of bankruptcy.
March 26, 2012 at 7:45 pm
AG
This part is funny: “The newspaper’s analysis suggests that tens of thousands of children may have been harmed by inflated scores that could have precluded tutoring or more drastic administrative actions.”
One of the first things that happens when test scores don’t continue to rise to the approved level each year is that a school goes into “program improvement.” That’s a fancy label that means the government restricts 20% of your Title 1 funding to enable such things as parents transferring their kids to a school not in program improvement (maybe even an out-of-district school, and your home district can be forced to use its Title 1 funds to pay your transportation costs). As everyone knows, the fastest way to improve a school is to scare the students away while simultaneously removing the funding that pays for silly things like reading and math intervention.
The greatest sin of failing schools is that they aren’t located in wealthy neighborhoods.
March 26, 2012 at 8:22 pm
Ben Dover
The point of all of this, star testing, cutting funding, “competition” for funding according to test scores, is to privatize the schools. Years ago the decision was made to privatize the public school system because businesses weren’t making a profit from it.
Why do schools have to “compete” for funding? Wasn’t the idea to have a free public education system so that democracy could have an informed populace who could participate in civic life?
Once the money is cut and all the students are sucked into “charter” schools we will have no public education at all.The choice will be WalMart or Gap School or Christian School or Bill Gates Genentec School, all financed by untraceable foundations. And we are still going to be on the hook to pay for fancy new facilities for whatever “non-profit” foundation takes over Southern Humboldt Schools.
Remember the words of the “educator and entrepeneur” who took over a school district in Southern California and privatized it into a charter schools, “The great thing about being a non-profit is that can’t nobody tell you what to do.”
March 26, 2012 at 10:16 pm
AG
Remember, the state-produced list of failing public schools published annually forces all sorts of sanctions that further harm the schools. The law that created the list explicitly prohibits charter schools from being on the list — despite the fact that every charter school in California is a public school receiving public funding. And, oh yes, there are seriously failing charter schools in our state.
March 27, 2012 at 7:37 am
so lame
Two words: OPT OUT. Don’t buy the guilt trio about funding. The system is broken… https://m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=400718296624593&id=100000592775483&__user=1255546715#!/profile.php?id=117479641627357&__user=1255546715
March 27, 2012 at 9:11 am
unanonymous
did anyone consider the test may be the problem? seems the statistics didn’t even broach that subject.