About the Scaled-Back Testing.....

The Pensacola News Journal has a piece today about Escambia County Schools scaling back the number of standardized tests administered annually district-wide.

Everyone, and I mean everyone, agrees we were testing students way too much.

This is not a new issue, and the blame game between districts and the state as to whom it is/was that was requiring so many tests continues to this day; local administrators blame the state for all the testing, and the state blames the districts.

So last legislative session the issue was addressed via a law that limits the number of hours students can spend taking tests.  Many of us feel this law did not go far enough.

Now, the ideological perspectives bubble up, determining what tests to cut, and what tests to keep.

Establishment types, unions, liberals, and other educrats want nothing less than an end to all standardized, summative assessments that actually measure student mastery of content and that carry any real consequences.  While they won't necessarily (openly) admit this, they DO want a return to the days of no accountability, no tests that can group students by ability levels or ----wait for it----- actually prevent social promotion.  They want teachers to be the arbiters of pass/fail, not a test, and this scenario all but assures that social promotion will once again re-emerge even stronger than ever! (teachers can be, and are often, chided into passing students who should not be passed.)

Politicians and lobbyists for the testing industry are agnostic as to the value and or consequences of testing, but simply want more testing, summative, formative, and every type in between that  they can sell. (they make money-- big money--- selling tests).

But conservatives and reformers like me want a better, more balanced approach.  We want fewer tests and more classroom learning time and teacher autonomy.  We don't want the elimination of summative tests, but rather fewer of them and much less "drilling and teaching" to these summative tests.  We understand that an educational world devoid of summative tests does not prepare students for the real tests of life that carry real consequences.  And to focus on formative tests exclusively is lazy and redundant; pop quizzes, classwork, projects, assignments, and homework give teachers the information they need to inform teaching practice to their students.  Keeping only the formative assessments is akin to taking the easy way out and is, no matter what a bureaucrat tells you to the contrary, an act of dodging accountability.

In this battle, the educational establishment types have won this skirmish locally.

Is this a victory though, or is this regression?

On the current trajectory, I see the slow and plodding watering down of assessments that carry any real consequences, under the guise of saving class time and eliminating "high stakes testing".  But

More Stringent Requirements to be Put in Place for Matriculation from Middle School to High School

Sometimes it pays to be persistent.  And I have been on this issue, as I have felt for some time now that we were moving too many students out of middle school unprepared for the rigor of High School with a miniscule, almost non-existent hurdle to jump over to get there. 

I blogged about it here, and I discussed the issue last year as well when the student progression plan was being brought for the board's consideration.   I also brought it up in 2011. I simply felt, and continue to feel, that there should be some meaningful requirement above just having straight "D"s and level "1"s across the board and then being welcomed to High School.

Many non-academic factors were given as the justification for not making the matriculation requirement more robust, and the worst one I kept hearing was "Many of these students have already been held back multiple years."  Or "What if they quit?" 

We don't want kids to quit, we want to motivate them.  But we must stop socially promoting them, which we have been doing for quite awhile now.  It must stop, this could be a first step.

I have always liked the carrot and stick approach;  If you want to play football, basketball, and take part in other HS extra-curricular activities-you have to do more than the bare-bones minimum in MS. 

HS extra-curricular participation is the carrot.

Because those that slide into HS having barely escaped middle school with borderline failing grades and the lowest possible scores on the FCAT--those students are the ones being set up for failure, and they are the ones most likely to drop out and/or not complete within four years.

Often we know these same students, (the socially promoted ones) out of frustration or for whatever reason, are a large source of significant discipline issues once they reach high school.  Not being prepared for the rigor of HS exacerbates this phenomenon..... So we need a carrot, and a stick.

So now, the stick is in place if the new plan is accepted.

With this year's Student Progression Plan, to move from 8th grade to 9th grade, students must meet a 2.0 GPA in their MS coursework.  If not, the newly proposed rule that the board will consider for advertisement next week specifies that students who fall short of this GPA requirement will be subject to possible retention in MS or compelled to participate in a "transition" program over the Summer. 

So I'll be asking a lot about what this "transition program" is, though, as this is my one big area of concern.  If we set up a procedure where the "good cause" exemptions from the GPA requirement "swallow the  GPA requirement"  Then we won't be accomplishing anything and this plan won't be effective and I won't support a list of  200 "good cause" exemptions for this new policy. 

I'm going to ask a lot about this transition program, but I'm also going to enthusiastically support this change to the progression plan which I feel represents much forward, incremental progress.

we are, apparently,  finally addressing a long-standing issue.