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E-mail Home > Blogs > Get on the Bus > Archives > 2009 > January > 13 > Entry
Save the tests! (And the kids!)
Outgoing U.S. Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings’ letter to her successor Arne Duncan in the Washington Post praises Duncan as a “fellow reformer” and urges him to do one big thing — save the tests!
From Spellings’ letter:
“I urge you to resist calls to dismantle the core accountability provisions that give the law its power to identify and help children in need. Without it, we’re back to doling out dollars and crossing our fingers.”
Accountability under NCLB meant one thing and one thing only — standardized test scores. Tests are one useful measure of academic success. The should be a part of any accountability system. But for Spellings, they were the only measure that mattered. And in some cases, NCLB advocates used those test scores to draw conclusions the tests simply are not designed to draw.
It also was interesting how much praise Spellings lavished on Duncan, saying he “achieved results” for Chicago schoolchildren while superintendent there. Judging by what Chicago teachers have to say about Duncan at the Chicago schools blog it seem there is a difference of opinion about what Duncan actually accomplished.
Permalink | Comments (3) | Post your comment | Categories: Testing
Comments
By A. Tuttle
January 17, 2009 9:45 AM | Link to this
The issue is not so much accountability as it is HOW the test results are used. Unrelentless categorizing of students and labeling of schools is not my idea of a stellar education system. I just read The Missing Heart: Chronicles of an Educator by Teri Pinney. What an eye opener of how school administrators have become test mongers!
By davidss2
January 14, 2009 9:43 AM | Link to this
Chicago schools. Isn’t that where the schools just spent $67000 on capuccino machines and only two were being used for education? The trouble with people who have all the answers in education who are in upper administration is that they usually don’t. The Bush pick from Texas had turned around the county school system only later to be exposed as having fudged the computer records for the graduation rates for example. Same old. Same old. No change in Washington like Obama promised; just more Clinton and Carter retreads.
By Oldprof
January 14, 2009 9:07 AM | Link to this
If the Bush-Spellings agenda of mismatched invalid standardized tests and threats to educators’ job security was a good idea, why hasn’t it worked yet?