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Ok..another complaint I hear often is that people "teach to the test".
Can someone please tell me why this is a bad thing?
If the test verifies for example that you know 2+2 =4 or 5-2=3, then why is teaching them the skills which helps them pass that skill ability a bad thing? Tests by nature measure your abilities. Teaching the skills to pass that test, means they'll have those skills if they pass the test.
What is the big deal?
Now I hear some saying, well yeah....but creativity.
Oh for goodness sakes, then offer creative writing, arts, shop.
For the stuff that matters, teach to the test.
To develop creativity, teach arts, writing, shop, etc.
I'd be more concerned if a teacher wasn't teaching to the test. I mean that would indicate they're not teaching the required skills that are needed.
Can someone please tell me why this is a bad thing?
If the test verifies for example that you know 2+2 =4 or 5-2=3, then why is teaching them the skills which helps them pass that skill ability a bad thing? Tests by nature measure your abilities. Teaching the skills to pass that test, means they'll have those skills if they pass the test.
What is the big deal?
Now I hear some saying, well yeah....but creativity.
Oh for goodness sakes, then offer creative writing, arts, shop.
For the stuff that matters, teach to the test.
To develop creativity, teach arts, writing, shop, etc.
I'd be more concerned if a teacher wasn't teaching to the test. I mean that would indicate they're not teaching the required skills that are needed.
It always amazes me that even the best of ideas become bad ideas if they go too far. It is such a good thing if all children in the country had to learn up to a basic standard.
My sister's 12 year old grandson from another state could not find her car when she told him it was in row number 24, because he could not read that number. He was home schooled only because his mother was too lazy to get him ready for school.
My daughter in law teaches high school math. In her state she is given such strict rules about what to teach that she feels she is not a professional anymore, able to assess her students and teach them to their needs at all. She is simply a robot following day to day orders.
My sister's 12 year old grandson from another state could not find her car when she told him it was in row number 24, because he could not read that number. He was home schooled only because his mother was too lazy to get him ready for school.
My daughter in law teaches high school math. In her state she is given such strict rules about what to teach that she feels she is not a professional anymore, able to assess her students and teach them to their needs at all. She is simply a robot following day to day orders.
K
I think you are mistaken to what "teaching to the test" actually means. It's literally teaching how to take and pass a standardized test. There is way more to learning than how to fill in bubbles, avoid trick questions, how to think like the test maker. This test that we are teaching to does not include everything that a student should learn in a year; it isn't possible. The problem to teaching to a test is that because so much emphasis is put on the test, teachers have to focus the majority of their teaching only on concepts that the test will cover. Why do you think students are getting behind? What we are teaching is being too heavily controlled.
There are students that don't test well, there are students that need visuals, there are students that are hands-on. If we teach to the test, these students will be left out. How is that fair? That isn't what teaching is about.
I completely agree that teachers should be testing their students to see where they are at and where there may need to be re-teaching, but that isn't teaching to a test. Yes, we need to have standards as to what students should be learning and when, BUT it shouldn't be controlled by the government and it can't all be assessed with pencil, paper, and a bunch of bubbles.
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The SAT test is being dumbed down to accommodate today's product of the failing liberal controlled public education system. This way they can pretend that everything's "OK" and keep the student loans flowing into institutions of higher learning whose own curriculum has been deteriorating in complexity for a long time.
HTML:
http://www.nas.org/articles/the_sat_upgrade_is_a_big_mistake
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Despite massive increases in educational spending, performance has decreased.
"“The takeaway from this study is that what we’ve done over the past 40 years hasn’t worked,” said Coulson, director of the Center For Educational Freedom at the CATO Institute. “The average performance change nationwide has declined 3 percent in mathematical and verbal skills. Moreover, there’s been no relationship, effectively, between spending and academic outcomes.”
http://watchdog.org/136876/study-school-spending/
Read the study: http://object.cato.org/sites/cato.org/files/pubs/pdf/pa746.pdf
"“The takeaway from this study is that what we’ve done over the past 40 years hasn’t worked,” said Coulson, director of the Center For Educational Freedom at the CATO Institute. “The average performance change nationwide has declined 3 percent in mathematical and verbal skills. Moreover, there’s been no relationship, effectively, between spending and academic outcomes.”
http://watchdog.org/136876/study-school-spending/
Read the study: http://object.cato.org/sites/cato.org/files/pubs/pdf/pa746.pdf
Any time we give government control of something that we should be controlling ourselves, there is something negative that happens. When government goes too far with their control of education, then teachers just become robots, they are not allowed to tailor their class to fit the needs of individual students. As it is, no teacher can teach Christian values. They can teach many points of other religions, but not Christian. They are forced to teach humanism, and it is OK, even to teach about the good witch, etc. instead.
Hitler used education of children, using some of these same reasons, to teach his value system. Home school was outlawed. It is dangerous to allow government to have this much control of our country, even our wonderful government.
At the same time, our kids are allowed, in some cases, to even graduate from high school without really reading, even. They come out of our schools without learning to be responsible for themselves, often without the ability to take responsibility for a job but need overseeing. Now, we really need government control. But it is going to cost us.
Most of our home schooled kids have a good education, but it takes a very disciplined mother for that, and some don't have that discipline. It makes it an absolute must that home schooled kids pass standard tests or some will be cheated out of an education and will need to go on the welfare roles so we always have to feed them.
It would be wonderful if we could say that government can go this far, but forever and ever, government can go no further in regulating education.
Hitler used education of children, using some of these same reasons, to teach his value system. Home school was outlawed. It is dangerous to allow government to have this much control of our country, even our wonderful government.
At the same time, our kids are allowed, in some cases, to even graduate from high school without really reading, even. They come out of our schools without learning to be responsible for themselves, often without the ability to take responsibility for a job but need overseeing. Now, we really need government control. But it is going to cost us.
Most of our home schooled kids have a good education, but it takes a very disciplined mother for that, and some don't have that discipline. It makes it an absolute must that home schooled kids pass standard tests or some will be cheated out of an education and will need to go on the welfare roles so we always have to feed them.
It would be wonderful if we could say that government can go this far, but forever and ever, government can go no further in regulating education.
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The United States spends more than any other nation in the world on its students' education each year. But despite the massive per student spending, U.S. students scores have plummeted to average on international tests and are trending lower.
The average student enrolled in public school for 12 years can expect to have more than $100,000 spent on his or her education in present real dollars.
But among 34 developed countries, the United States ranked only 26th in math, 21st in science and 17th in reading.
“Our scores are stagnant. We’re not seeing any improvement for our 15-year-olds,” said Jack Buckley, commissioner at the National Center for Education Statistics, the research arm of the Education Department. “But our ranking is slipping because a lot of these other countries are improving.”
Education Secretary Arne Duncan called the scores a “brutal truth” that “must serve as a wake-up call” for the country.
The test scores offer fresh evidence for those who argue that the United States is losing ground to global competitors and others who say a decade’s worth of school reform has done little to improve educational outcomes.
“While the intentions may have been good, a decade of top-down, test-based schooling created by No Child Left Behind and Race to the Top — focused on hyper-testing students, sanctioning teachers and closing schools — has failed to improve the quality of American public education,” said Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers.
Source: Key findings - OECD
2012 PISA Results: http://www.oecd.org/pisa/keyfindings/pisa-2012-results-overview.pdf
We spend the most, rank average and below average, and are trending lower while other advanced nations trend upwards.
When you try to explain this to a liberal; however, they simply say either 1) spend more money or 2) test scores aren't really important.
Well, we are already spending the MOST money and those test scores certainly are communicating important information. Taken together what's being communicated is that the liberal public indoctrination/education system is systemically broken and no amount of money can fix it. The system itself must be fixed.
The American Education System Must Be Restored ~ Help Fix America First
The average student enrolled in public school for 12 years can expect to have more than $100,000 spent on his or her education in present real dollars.
But among 34 developed countries, the United States ranked only 26th in math, 21st in science and 17th in reading.
“Our scores are stagnant. We’re not seeing any improvement for our 15-year-olds,” said Jack Buckley, commissioner at the National Center for Education Statistics, the research arm of the Education Department. “But our ranking is slipping because a lot of these other countries are improving.”
Education Secretary Arne Duncan called the scores a “brutal truth” that “must serve as a wake-up call” for the country.
The test scores offer fresh evidence for those who argue that the United States is losing ground to global competitors and others who say a decade’s worth of school reform has done little to improve educational outcomes.
“While the intentions may have been good, a decade of top-down, test-based schooling created by No Child Left Behind and Race to the Top — focused on hyper-testing students, sanctioning teachers and closing schools — has failed to improve the quality of American public education,” said Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers.
Source: Key findings - OECD
2012 PISA Results: http://www.oecd.org/pisa/keyfindings/pisa-2012-results-overview.pdf
We spend the most, rank average and below average, and are trending lower while other advanced nations trend upwards.
When you try to explain this to a liberal; however, they simply say either 1) spend more money or 2) test scores aren't really important.
Well, we are already spending the MOST money and those test scores certainly are communicating important information. Taken together what's being communicated is that the liberal public indoctrination/education system is systemically broken and no amount of money can fix it. The system itself must be fixed.
The American Education System Must Be Restored ~ Help Fix America First
My biggest negativity to this is that children never learn all at the same time, if a "Common Standard" curriculum took over some children would be kept back (lower standards). Additionally standardized testing encourages schools to teach children how to pass the tests instead of actually learning, some go as far as giving the children the answers so that their school districts will pass and they can get more grants.
However, "Common Core" is even worse than just that for a variety of reason.
Have a watch of this short 30 minute movie for a quick insight.
[video=youtube;zjxBClx01jc]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zjxBClx01jc[/video]
Building the Machine | Home
However, "Common Core" is even worse than just that for a variety of reason.
Have a watch of this short 30 minute movie for a quick insight.
[video=youtube;zjxBClx01jc]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zjxBClx01jc[/video]
Building the Machine | Home
My biggest negativity to this is that children never learn all at the same time, if a "Common Standard" curriculum took over some children would be kept back (lower standards). Additionally standardized testing encourages schools to teach children how to pass the tests instead of actually learning, some go as far as giving the children the answers so that their school districts will pass and they can get more grants.
However, "Common Core" is even worse than just that for a variety of reason.
Building the Machine | Home
However, "Common Core" is even worse than just that for a variety of reason.
Building the Machine | Home
All of which sends us right back to what this site is all about: God.
A
Only 38 percent of those tested in 2013 scored as proficient readers on the National Assessment of Educational Progress, known as the “Nation’s Report Card,” released today by the Education Department. Three-quarters failed to show math proficiency. The scores were little changed from 2009, when the test was last given.
“Stagnation is unacceptable,” David Driscoll, chairman of the board that administers the test, said in a statement. “Achievement at this very critical point in a student’s life must be improved to ensure success after high school.”
High School Seniors in U.S. Fail to Show Reading, Math Progress - Bloomberg
The NAEP 2013 Report: The Nation's Report Card, A First Look: 2013 Mathematics and Reading
“Stagnation is unacceptable,” David Driscoll, chairman of the board that administers the test, said in a statement. “Achievement at this very critical point in a student’s life must be improved to ensure success after high school.”
High School Seniors in U.S. Fail to Show Reading, Math Progress - Bloomberg
The NAEP 2013 Report: The Nation's Report Card, A First Look: 2013 Mathematics and Reading
A
"The SAT was invented in 1926 to open the doors to college for students who were natively smart but came from unpromising backgrounds. Over the decades it became a primary tool for college admissions officers to match potential students with the level off rigor embodied in a college's curriculum. The goal was to find students who in all likelihood would succeed.
That began to change with the push for racial preferences in college admissions in the 1970s and 1980s. As colleges and universities more and more foregrounded the goal of "diversity" in admissions, the SAT began to look like an embarrassing artifact of an earlier time. It stood for established standards and evidence of intellectual reach at a time when it had become much more useful to emphasize "evolving" definitions of excellence and achievement.
The new approaches emphasized cultural variety in how people think and what they think about, and the greater relevance to college work of "personal perspective" and viewpoint over mere knowledge. Likewise "experience" began to seem as valuable in a college applicant as intellectual skill.
The first real fruit of these new concerns was the "recentering" of the SAT's scoring system in the 1990s, which ballooned the scores of mediocre students and erased the differences among students at the higher end of the scale.
Then, among other changes, came the elimination in 2002 of the verbal analogies portion of the tests, which jettisoned a section for the explicit reason that black students on average performed less well on it than they did on other sections. That same year the College Board removed the "asterisk" that indicated that a student had taken the test with special accommodations such as extra time.
So the attempt to use the SAT as an instrument to advance "social justice" is, in a sense, more of the same... But there are always costs, and sooner or later we will pay them. We are embarking on a great expansion of the left's long-term project of trading off our best chances to foster individual excellence for broadly-distributed access to mediocre education."
The SAT Upgrade Is a Big Mistake |
That began to change with the push for racial preferences in college admissions in the 1970s and 1980s. As colleges and universities more and more foregrounded the goal of "diversity" in admissions, the SAT began to look like an embarrassing artifact of an earlier time. It stood for established standards and evidence of intellectual reach at a time when it had become much more useful to emphasize "evolving" definitions of excellence and achievement.
The new approaches emphasized cultural variety in how people think and what they think about, and the greater relevance to college work of "personal perspective" and viewpoint over mere knowledge. Likewise "experience" began to seem as valuable in a college applicant as intellectual skill.
The first real fruit of these new concerns was the "recentering" of the SAT's scoring system in the 1990s, which ballooned the scores of mediocre students and erased the differences among students at the higher end of the scale.
Then, among other changes, came the elimination in 2002 of the verbal analogies portion of the tests, which jettisoned a section for the explicit reason that black students on average performed less well on it than they did on other sections. That same year the College Board removed the "asterisk" that indicated that a student had taken the test with special accommodations such as extra time.
So the attempt to use the SAT as an instrument to advance "social justice" is, in a sense, more of the same... But there are always costs, and sooner or later we will pay them. We are embarking on a great expansion of the left's long-term project of trading off our best chances to foster individual excellence for broadly-distributed access to mediocre education."
The SAT Upgrade Is a Big Mistake |