The testing madness in Florida has finally gone over the edge into full-blown lunacy. End-of-course exams will be given to every student in every grade and in every subject, including kindergartens.
“The new end-of-course tests are needed to meet the demands of Florida’s controversial 2011 teacher merit pay law, which requires student test data to be used in public school teachers’ evaluations.
“The abundance of new tests – about 400 must be introduced in the Palm Beach County school district – has rankled many educators and parents.
“It appears the primary purpose is more about teacher evaluation than what’s in the best interest of students,” Superintendent Wayne Gent said.
“Rita Solnet, of Boca Raton, who founded Parents Across America Florida, said it’s “absurd and heartbreaking” that testing is being expanded to kindergartners who “are babies still, just learning how to maneuver in the world.”
“Administrators say they plan to make the new tests age-appropriate. But elementary students could end up taking multiple tests, such as ones for reading, math, music, art and physical education….
“Under state law, school districts are supposed to administer these tests this year. Palm Beach County school officials say only 41 of the more than 400 required are currently in development. They include elementary arts and physical education, middle and high school foreign languages and social studies.”
The merit-pay law was the first legislation signed by Governor Rick Scott.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Before the Testing Madness smothered our educational system ….teachers would evaluate learning throughout any lesson day in and day out.. for each individual student.
That has been replaced with… “One Test fits All” …..
Testers…not teachers…are needed today to outfit our schools. …..
Diane,
Here is the info I have gathered so far, but in no way know if it is complete or not as NO ONE will give us an answer. I am a Florida teacher. We have been told that the EOC will be tied to merit pay. BUT- in order to get merit pay you have to relinquish your “tenure” to get any extra $$, and we haven’t even been told what that amount is. Once you relinquish your “tenure” you do not get it back. How many teachers do you think are stupid enough to accept that term? I haven’t met one. So all this fall-de-rah over test scores for WHAT? Data has become a 4 letter word. It should be banned.
Here is an idea… let Obama’s children go through a year of schooling in this county and let’s just see what dad has to say about the cult of testing that is snowballing nation-wide BY MANDATE.
Here is my prediction for the county… they expand the school day so as to accommodate “more learning”… umm.. TESTING. They offer a “merit system” where only teachers who meet certain test scores are paid for the extra time they put into the school day and hire a slick expensive PR firm to PR it to death making it appear as if it is a salary increase because ALL TEACHERS ARE NOT WORTHY OF BEING IN THE CLASSROOM UNLESS THEY GET RESULTS. With the aim so high, they fully expect to reach the goal of 100 percent of teachers getting students to score high and this will be considered “a merit-inducing raise”. They save money by firing teachers and consolidating grade level classes because there will be so little time for teaching beyond testing that they hire uncertified “teacher assistants” whose job it is to monitor the students in a perpetual state of bubbling in the tests. Meanwhile, Pearson increases its profits enormously. Flaws in the tests???…There will be even more but whose counting? Nobody because nobody can see the tests except for the students taking them. There are tons of highly paid consultants hired to analyze the test results of the students and to compile reports to feed Duncan’s ever-increasing ego and of course to feed the Gate’s funded super computer to compile data on every student in the county.
Sorry, you missed the part about all the student’s will have individual lab tops computers (with micro soft programing) to mirco-manage their daily learning. Teaching will be reduce to computer techs and aids to monitor students other than class room teachers. Teachers will do very little teaching and will provide more enrichment activities. This will actually equal less pay over time to non administrative staff. Administrators will make totally too much money as they will pander the system to push and sell big business ideas to families. Corporations will spy on families to coherce them into educational goals and compliance at first. Later, parents will be fined for not complying with Federal mandated goals in running their child’s affairs to corporate led ideals. Much later parents will have to petition for a license for even having a child since children will be viewed at government owned.
I am sort of being out there, but you can see how this could happened and probably most of it will come to pass if poverty does not cause a flat out revolt.
Diane posted both the video and Greene’s reaction yesterday.
What parents don’t always understand in the whole marit pay business is that a lot of time the teacher before the so called “successful teacher or the teacher that produces results,” that another teacher “set up” the correct behavior and laid the foundation. So next what happened is the students can learn material more quickly and easily. It is a slap in the face for all the teachers that do not get recognized for test scores.
Like parenting, it takes a team approach to raise up a child appropriately. Not one parent is so much as better then the other. They do get different results at different times in contributing their child’s success.
So should we give marrit pay to parents and families? Maybe we should offer tax breaks and incentives to good family units. Of course their is always that black sheep child in the family as well. That child just prefers to do their own thing. Should we punish parents too and not recognize their good effort. Maybe we should punish them for not having enough resources or having a extremely ADHD/ ED or disable child? Is that fair? Come on people stop this control freakish garbage already. Realize life happened and we simply deal with it to make it better when situations happens.
I remember well a comment by our Director of Elementary Education years ago about expecting children to tested. Maybe we should demand that we measure their physical attributes, if they do not ALL be of a certain physical height and weight by the prescribed age then they cannot be promoted.
Yet again, who makes up the tests and how relevant are they? Educators are aware of this but politicians? Ignorance is NOT bliss. A heavy price is to be and is being paid by stupidity and ignorance.