Texas Republicans are hearing from their constituents–in the grocery store, at the barber, wherever they go.
People think that testing in Texas is out of control.
The last state commissioner Robert Scott said so. He called the testing obsession a “vampire,” sucking the life out of education.
More than 80% of local school boards agree.
Elected officials have to listen.
They cut $5.4 billion from the school budget but managed to find $500 million to pay Pearson.
Superintendents are sick of it. School boards are sick of it. Parents are fed up. Students hate it.
Put a stake through the heart of the vampire.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
I would to see Pearson go belly up.
Great news.
“They cut $5.4 billion from the school budget but managed to find $500 million to pay Pearson.”
An outrage … glad the public is waking up.
This is the two step forwards I was talking about.
What woderful news!! The wake up call has been sounded and like the call of Paul Revere it is being heard from town to town and state to state!!! The horse is called
Internet and the rider is Diane Ravitch!!! and all of you!!!
Pearson is part of what I call Education Profiteers, along the lines of War Profiteers and Poverty Pimps.
Testing isn’t the only problem..all the “accountability” reforms which are based on those standardized test scores have to be peeled away as well. We must eliminate one-size-fits-all, scripted (I might argue more like ‘conscripted’) state mandates placed on schools. This will all be very bad for children…unless society decides that we all want the zombies that the virtual school factories will create:(
The commentator in the video also makes a good point about teacher evaluations; giving the example of administrators coming in with a checklist ticking off irrelevant slices of a teacher’s lesson. Did this help improve student learning? No. Yet, Obama’s administration is doubling down on this failed policy by withholding Race to the Bottom money to districts who fail to comply with a new teacher evaluation scheme. In New York, the new panacea to improving “teacher effectiveness” is the Danielson Rubric. This is a bizarre method that tries to break down teaching into a series of small tickable tasks. While this may be an adequate measurement if you’re manufacturing cheap shoes, it cannot measure effective teacher and the impact on student learning. Yet, all we hear from our Governor is how we must agree to this unproven method of teacher evaluation – which, by the way, will cost more to implement than the Race to the Bottom “competitive” grants NY is receiving. So who’s winning in the game? I guess Charlotte Danielson, consultants, paper manufacturers, etc….but certainly not the children!
I just found out that my new student from Vietnam, who speaks no English, will have to take the STAAR test. He has only been in my classroom for one month. I teach third grade. There are no exemptions! My teaching partner just got a new student from Germany and the same applies. This is just NUTS!
My fear is that this is a ploy to then allow vouchers (since money would go to private schools not required to test kids). So, the strategy is: eliminate testing, then pass vouchers after the giant stumbling block of no accountability for voucher schools disappears when testing is eliminated. If your goal is to simply privatize education, that would be how you would get it done in Texas. Gonna be hard to eliminate testing, though, in the face of the business community staunchly defending it.
There’s a big voucher scheme in play right now by conservatives in TX. They have tried to pass it many times, but it has always failed. There are rumors that it might actually pass this time around, so you might be on to something.
http://abclocal.go.com/ktrk/story?section=news/in_focus&id=8946665