Carol Burris has written an article addressed to parents, explaining what tests are good for and how they are being misused.
Send this to your friends, especially if they are public school parents.
She identifies three “reforms” that parents should be concerned about, involving the misuse of testing.
This is the “reform” that you should keep your eye on:
The amassing of individual student scores in national and state databases.
State and national databases are being created in order to analyze and house students’ test scores. No parental permission is required. I wonder why not. Students who take the SAT must sign off before we send their scores to colleges. Before my high school’s students could participate in the National Educational Longitudinal Study, they needed written permission from their parents. Yet, in New York, massive amounts of student data are now being collected and sent beyond the school without parental permission —end of year course grades, test scores, attendance, ethnicity, disabilities and the kinds of modifications that students receive. This data will be used to evaluate teachers, schools, schools of education and perhaps for other purposes yet unknown. Schools are no longer reporting collective data; we are now sending individual student data. Although the name remains in the district, what assurances do parents truly have that future databases will not be connected and used for other purposes? The more data that is sent, the easier it will be to identify the individual student.
Eleven states have agreed to give confidential teacher and student data for free to a shared learning collaborative funded by Bill Gates and run byMurdoch’s Wireless Corp. Wireless received $44 million for the project. With Common Core State Standards testing, such databases are expected to expand. Funding for data warehousing siphons taxpayer dollars from the classroom to corporations like Wireless and Pearson. Because Common Core testing will be computer-based, the purchase of hardware, software and upgrades will consume school budgets, while providing profits for the testing and computer industries.
Although all of the above is in motion, it can be modified or stopped. Parents should speak to their local PTAs and School Boards, as well as their legislators. They should ask questions regarding what data is being collected and to whom it is sent.
Burris recommends that:
It is time to get Back to Basics. Let’s make sure that every test a student takes is used to measure and enhance her learning, not for adult, high-stakes purposes. Basic commonsense tells us that student test results belong to families, not databases. Remind politicians that the relationship between student and teacher, not student and test helps our young people get through life’s challenges. Finally, let’s return to the basic purpose of public schooling — to promote the academic, social and emotional growth of our children. It is the role of schools to develop healthy and productive citizens, not master test takers.
So Rupert Murdoch, whose company hacked into the cell phone of a missing, murdered 13 year old, will be profiting from the collection of student test data. When this venture was reported in the NY Times:
http://mediadecoder.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/07/23/news-corporation-forms-new-brand-for-education-division/?smid=tw-share
I left this message for Joel Klein as he stated in the article: “I’m candid that if this isn’t embraced by teachers in America, it won’t work.”
Dear Mr. Klein:
I am an educator and a parent and I don’t embrace anything being promoted and sold by you or Murdoch. You do not care about children, teaching and learning. You care about profits, profits, profits.
Stay away from our children. I don’t trust anyone associated with a company that hacked into the cell phone of a missing, murdered 13 year old.
I will collect and track student results the old fashioned way. I will get to know each of my students as individuals with dreams, strengths, goals and opinions. We will create individual portfolios with writing samples and journal entries. We will read fiction, non fiction, memoirs, news articles, essays, short stories, poems. We will share ideas, opinions and create long term projects: research, book trailers, original plays, book blogs, etc.
As a teacher it is my responsibility to be data informed NOT data driven. I promise you I will not waste time staring at a computer, tablet or wireless device.
Instead I will look at my students and see and hear them. So, I will tell you now I take a pass on your “digital learning tools” and instead I will use my brain, my instincts and my 26 years of teaching experience to guide me, something the faux reformers (you, Rhee, Bloomberg, Sternberg) know nothing about.
What a wonderful response to Mr. Klein! Thanks for sharing it!
Hmmm, I clicked on the Murdoch link, and it was broken. Interesting that the broken-link information indicated that they only kept the article available for seven days, yet this same organization will probably keep individual student data for years.