A few years back and three Chancellors of Education ago-- then Chancellor Gerard Robinson made an allegation on his blog that infuriated many board members around the state. In this statement made by Robinson--he deflected statewide criticism he was receiving from education stakeholders regarding the out-of-control testing mandates coming down from Tallahassee. He simply blamed local districts. It wasn't us, it's them, they did it!
It reminds me of a scene from the 1979 film "The Warriors" captured at minute 1:42 of this clip.
(Wrong guys got blamed due to a false statement being repeated over and over and over loudly and often by someone in a position of credibility)
At that time in July 2012, I brought the issue to the board meeting and was reassured that it was the state, not us, that was mandating the massive number of tests.
Fast forward to last Tuesday and the big education summit in Tallahassee, and this time I heard with my own ears directly from the highest education official in the state that it is local districts, not the state DOE or Tallahassee mandates, that are driving the massive number of tests administered yearly at the district level?
So who is it?
This issue was discussed by one of my counterparts on the board, and recently in speaking to a peer in a central Florida county, they are asking the same questions and are receiving murky, misleading, or flat-out inaccurate answers.
Looks like it's time to once again bring this issue to the board's workshop to pin down who it is, exactly, that is mandating the ridiculous number of tests that we are administering locally.
We're all for a rational, reasonable level of standardized testing for accountability--but what we are doing statewide now is ridiculous and it is burning out teachers and students and robbing classrooms of learning time.
