Whoever thought it was a good idea to turn education into a political issue should hang his or her head in shame.
In the midst of a heated gubernatorial race, Connecticut Governor Dannel Malloy, heretofore an admirer of testing and the Common Core and more testing, has written a letter to the U.S. Department of Education saying that students are tested too much, especially in the 11th grade.
“Gov. Dannel P. Malloy appealed to the U.S. Department of Education on Friday to consider whether juniors in Connecticut really need to take a statewide standardized test in the same year that they have SATs, ACTs, AP exams and finals.
“Federal law requires states to test students from grades 3-8 and again in 10th grade. But the new high school test for the Common Core standards is given to 11th graders, with the thinking it yields better data on student learning. This was the first year the test was given to juniors, causing an uproar from some parents.
“I am eager to explore solutions for the students who may be our most overtested: our 11th graders,” Malloy said in the letter to the U.S. Education Department.”
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Au contraire, DINO Dan. Step into any elementary school in Connecticut and you will see what over-testing truly looks like. Our youngest students are being tested like never before. We have pretests and posttests, benchmark assessments, and computerized standardized tests. Some of these tests take an hour to complete. Have you seen a first- or second-grader try to sit and stay on task for an entire hour? They play with their pencils, ask to go to the bathroom/nurse, and get up for drinks of water. The sad part is that after we put them through this rigamarole we learn nothing of value about them at all.
Not to mention Lehrer that 11th grade has not experienced testing related to CCS, other than the 2014 SBAC pilot Pyror insisted no one could opt out of. So Dannel is not even reducing testing for that grade level.
It’s all grades 1-8 but mostly 5th and 8th that will take SBAC, CMT science, NEAP and for many districts NWEA MAP too.
Dan can’t even pick the right grade to feign outrage prior to the November election. Does he think we are all stupid?
He doesn’t think teachers are stupid. He doesn’t think most parents with children in the game are stupid. He is just posturing the way he thinks the wind blows, but his posturing means zilch.
I think he either thinks we are stupid or have very short memories. His $55 rebate plan tells me he thinks we’re stupid. The fact that he is courting teachers to get reelected tells me he thinks we have very short memories. Despite his insulting comments, he wants us to think of him as a friend of public education. You really can’t make this crap up!
I teach grades 9, 10 and 11. Without a doubt, the juniors take many more tests than any other HS grade. I suppose the thinking is that if they don’t do well, they can be tested again.
I wonder if that was part of his pitch to the American Enterprise Institute?
Malloy’s “epiphany” is most surely political.
He was elected with the support of the teachers in Connecticut and their unions. Subsequently, he appointed the unqualified Stefan Pryor, whose only education experience was that he had been the co-founder and first board president of Amistad Academy, a public charter school in New Haven, as Commissioner of education. Pryor, with Governor Malloy’s direction, instituted a series of onerous education reforms across the state. Now, with a number of improprieties within the charter schools in Connecticut under increasing scrutiny, Pryor conveniently resigns from his commissioner’s position “to pursue other opportunities”, therefore attempting to keep his backside out of that frying pan.
This election, lacking any support from the teachers he has alienated and in a close political race against his Republican opponent, Governor Malloy has an “epiphany” were he suddenly realizes that perhaps (perhaps?) some of the students in the state are being over-tested. Really! Methinks that something smells fishy.
The danger in this election is that both candidates could threaten tenure and the state’s teacher pension system. Indeed, a choice between the “lesser of two weevils”.
The letter is a bit of a joke. He’s begging for permission to give one fewer test, and he’s planning on replacing that test with a mandate that they all take a different one.
Still, I personally think that the public school supporters opposing testing have been really effective. I think you-all should take huge credit for that. Politicians are responding – strictly rhetorically and completely insincerely, but they wouldn’t be doing it at all if they weren’t feeling pressure 🙂
For a group with no funding and no media and one that is organized entirely by volunteers, you’ve now managed to reach lawmakers in Texas, Bill Gates, Arne Duncan and this grasping, politically endangered governor.
That’s not nothing. Whatever you’re doing, it’s working.
It is worth reading Jon Pelto’s blog post this morning dealing with all of these topics here in Connecticut.
Malloy allocates $500k to figure out how to reduce standardized testing…
http://jonathanpelto.com/2014/09/08/malloy-allocates-500k-figure-reduce-standardized-testing/
He has a prior post from 9/5 dealing with Malloy’s position on teacher tenure:
onathanpelto.com/2014/09/05/governor-malloy-tell-truth-position-teacher-tenure/
“In response to Malloy’s remark that public school teachers need only show up for four years and they’ll get tenure, Malloy recently told the audience at the Norwich Bulletin Candidate Debate, “I should admit that was bad language. It wasn’t about them. It was about tenure… I shouldn’t have said it. I apologize for saying it.’”
Did he regret that the statement was untrue or that it revealed his true thoughts?
Link to second of Jon Pelto’s posts – that pertaining to Malloy’s position on teacher tenure.
http://jonathanpelto.com/2014/09/05/governor-malloy-tell-truth-position-teacher-tenure/
There is only one candidate opposed to Common Core testing and data mining and his name is Joe Visconti. Malloy just ripped off Visconti’s college student tax relief idea and he knows Visconti has gained tremendous support so he’s backpedaling.