At The74 (the nation's most uneven education coverage), Goldy Brown (Whitworth U and AEI/CERN) and Christos Makridis (Labor Economics and ASU) have a bold idea that involves putting fresh paint on a bad old idea--the national Big Standardized Test.
When I was in school it seemed like we lost around two weeks of instruction to testing every year. My daughter is finishing 8th grade and it's closer to 6 weeks. Some of these are MAPS testing which I actually don't mind as much, but it seems a bit much. How many times do they need to get results that say the majority of students can't read at grade level? And that spending 6 weeks of class time on testing how far from grade level they are might be a waste of time? I personally feel like higher reading scores will automatically raise scores on every other subject, I don't know if research will bear that out or not. Maybe not so much math, but some even there.
But by recycling and repackaging these terrible ideas, money can be made - foundations will be encouraged to give to support the "new" version of "let's find out why schools aren't great." In a 30-year ed reform career, 2-4 iterations of the same crap should get you to a nice retirement - or a well-paid job at one of those foundations that used to fund your "work."
I had forgotten all about PAARC. 😂
When I was in school it seemed like we lost around two weeks of instruction to testing every year. My daughter is finishing 8th grade and it's closer to 6 weeks. Some of these are MAPS testing which I actually don't mind as much, but it seems a bit much. How many times do they need to get results that say the majority of students can't read at grade level? And that spending 6 weeks of class time on testing how far from grade level they are might be a waste of time? I personally feel like higher reading scores will automatically raise scores on every other subject, I don't know if research will bear that out or not. Maybe not so much math, but some even there.
But by recycling and repackaging these terrible ideas, money can be made - foundations will be encouraged to give to support the "new" version of "let's find out why schools aren't great." In a 30-year ed reform career, 2-4 iterations of the same crap should get you to a nice retirement - or a well-paid job at one of those foundations that used to fund your "work."