...The Maryland State Department of Education continues to resist dropping the Maryland School Assessment. MSDE officials say dropping the test will save little money and potentially jeopardize $289 million in federal funds.
“They’re going to be tested on standards that are not aligned with what they’re being taught,” Christopher Barclay of the Montgomery County Board of Education told the House Ways and Means Committee Wednesday.
Barclay was testifying on HB117 proposed by Del. Eric Luedtke, a Montgomery County Democrat and a teacher. The bill orders the state education department to seek a waiver from federal officials on the requirement for standardized tests under the federal No Child Left Behind law.
“It is educational malpractice,” said Tiferet Ani, a Montgomery County teacher. “This test has been meaningless” for some time, since it does not measure the progress of individual students, but schools as a whole.
School administrators “will not be looking at the results of these tests,” she said.
Ani had circulated a petition to drop the tests, and said it was a “dereliction” by the state education officials for not seeking a waiver from the federal mandate.
“They have not looked for a way to get out of this,” Ani said.
Jack Smith, chief academic officer for the State Department of Education, said dropping the test would save little money, since most of it had already been spent preparing the tests. And the move could potentially cause the state to lose $289 million in federal funds...
Read more: http://marylandreporter.com/2014/02/06/teachers-school-boards-seek-to-drop-this-years-standardized-tests/#ixzz2swbaeeIx
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Over the past 20 years we've had the MSA's the HSA's, the Alt MSA's, the CRT's, the CTBS, the MSPAP, the Terra Nova, and probably a few others I've forgotten. And at each implementation our Superintendents and Board said they weren't afraid to be held accountable.
ReplyDeleteYet every time the test has a life of a few years and as soon as we see a trend emerging the test is killed and we are told that it doesn't measure anything and is not meaningful.
The pattern just keeps repeating itself, so I wonder is it really that the tests don't mean anything or is it that they are killed so that the public can't know anything about the schools they are asked to fund?
Yet there is one consistent pattern. 20 Years ago, no matter what the test, MCPS was always #1 or #2 in the state. Today we have fallen to somewhere closer to the middle of the pack among Maryland School districts.
Bob Astrove
Somewhere in there, First Grade became Kindergarten - and now it's gotten exponentially worse with Common Core, but it started here with Jerry Weast's push for full-day Kindergarten in the name of "academic rigor." Since then, kids have been rushed to learn things before they're ready, which surely can't provide a solid foundation for future learning.
DeleteThanks, Jerry. :P
The overtesting is just the icing on the cake. Oh, and you forgot the MAP test.