No need to know math or reading or writing

[okay]

I am in my 50s, and when I graduated high school in Washington state there was no standardized test involved. Yet somehow I know how to read, write and do math. The lack of a standardized test did not mean that there were no standards.

I am glad we had no such test. My brother never would have passed it, since he has a learning disability that wasn’t diagnosed until college. It makes many-hours-long exams virtually impossible. Not graduating would have thrown him into a different path. That would have been a shame - he is a very smart man and is very successful. And yes, he can read, write and do math.

If my current state of residence did away with the standardizes test requirement I would not freak out. All the kids in private schools are already exempt.

 

[truthpls]

I am in my 50s, and when I graduated high school in Washington state there was no standardized test involved. Yet somehow I know how to read, write and do math. The lack of a standardized test did not mean that there were no standards.

I am glad we had no such test. My brother never would have passed it, since he has a learning disability that wasn’t diagnosed until college. It makes many-hours-long exams virtually impossible. Not graduating would have thrown him into a different path. That would have been a shame - he is a very smart man and is very successful. And yes, he can read, write and do math.

If my current state of residence did away with the standardizes test requirement I would not freak out. All the kids in private schools are already exempt.

The concern with sliding education standards for me and many others is that kids spend so much time learning other things instead. Things we don't like and find less than useless. Actually offensive and dangerous. A few examples of how some see it..
"American schools are ‘going down the tubes’ because they have been ‘infected’ with ‘woke culture’ that has ‘sacrificed the idea of excellence’ by ‘indoctrinating’ students, according to a leading critic.

Vivek Ramaswamy spoke out in response to two separate controversies that impacted elite New York City prep schools where parents complained their children were being brainwashed with anti-racism ideology.

Ramaswamy, a biotech entrepreneur and the author of Woke, Inc, compared the wave of ‘wokeness’ in schools to China’s Cultural Revolution of the 60s and 70s, when the people were indoctrinated with Maoism by the Communist Party"

Woke culture turning education into indoctrination, author warns

Vivek Ramaswamy, an entrepreneur and author of Woke, Inc, told Fox News on Sunday that American students are 'indoctrinated' similar to what took place during China's Cultural Revolution.

www.dailymail.co.uk

"
In Ontario, the Halton District School Board keeps making the news but for the wrong reasons—namely, a teacher who’s become infamous for wearing giant prosthetic breasts while teaching shop classes.

This teacher’s attire is such an obvious breach of professional decorum that media outlets around the world have breathlessly reported the story and published photos of this teacher. No reasonable person who sees these photos can think this teacher is appropriately dressed for work.

But in the latest twist, the Board’s director of education recently submitted a report concluding that there’s nothing the district can do about this situation. Apparently, imposing any sort of dress code on teachers “would expose the Board to considerable liability.”

In other words, not only can the district not do anything about this teacher’s obviously inappropriate attire, but it shouldn’t even try to formulate a staff dress code at all. One can only hope that teachers don’t start showing up to work wearing Speedos or bikinis.

How have we reached the point where school boards cannot impose something as simple as a staff dress code? Simply put, Ontario’s public schools are in the grip of woke ideology.

Woke ideology, or wokeism, focuses on being sensitive to social and political injustice. At first glance, this appears to be a positive thing. After all, no sensible person wants to be insensitive to injustices in our country and around the world. The problem, however, is that wokeism demands total ideological conformity.

For example, former Ottawa high school teacher Chancel Pfahl is being investigated by the Ontario College of Teachers, the body that grants teaching certificates, for voicing her opposition to critical race theory in a private teachers’ Facebook group. Tellingly, Pfahl was not accused of engaging in unprofessional conduct in her classroom or doing anything inappropriate with her students.

The fact that any teacher could be at risk of losing her professional licence for expressing a political opinion in a private forum—designed for discussion and engagement—should concern all Canadians. When woke activists demand ideological conformity from teachers, they undermine the core purpose of education, which is to help students become critical thinkers.

To make matters worse, some school boards are so obsessed with personal identity they’re trying to gather as much data as they can on the identities of their students. The Toronto District School Board recently sent out a survey to its Grades 4-8 students that contains an inordinate number of questions about race, gender and sexual orientation. Among other things, the survey asks students whether they are bisexual, transgender, queer/gender expansive, intersex, asexual or pansexual. And whether or not they’ve learned in school about “binding, packing, tucking, or padding options.” Remember, the students who received this survey aren’t even in high school yet.

Meanwhile, the Waterloo Region District School Board recently forced one of its teachers, Carolyn Burjoski, out of her job for raising questions about the age-appropriateness of the sexualized content found in some elementary school library books. Instead of taking Burjoski’s concerns seriously, the district placed her on home assignment until she resigned."

Woke ideology now dominates Ontario public schools : op-ed

When activists demand ideological conformity from teachers, they undermine the core purpose of education.

www.fraserinstitute.org

So one should be able to see that compounding such things with what appears on the surface to be a dumbing down on the education basics, they would raise yet another eyebrow. Anti-Christian anti-family blasphemy and indoctrination that is coupled with adult sexualized perverted curriculum as well undermining parental authority. All this with an increasing time and emphasis shifted from the basics, in other words.

 

[Stephen3141]

"High school students in one state have been relieved, by state officials, of the responsibility to document their understanding of math in order to graduate.

Or their understanding of reading.

Or their understanding of writing."

State says high schoolers can graduate without showing proficiency in math, reading | WND | by Bob Unruh

High school students in one state have been relieved, by state officials, of the responsibility to document their understanding of math in order to graduate.

www.wnd.com

Heck they don't even have to know what sex they are!

Is this something you want for your kids?

Note that this decision by the Oregon Department of Education, was AGAINST
the wishes of most Oregon voters.

The argument of the Department seems to be that giving a student a failing
grade, would traumatize them.

Well, how will these failing students NOT be traumatized, when they cannot
hold down any job but pouring coffee at a Starbucks store?

Note that the utopian liberals in Oregon, have reversed their decision to
legalize formerly illegal drugs. THAT legalization, did not contain the illegal
drug addiction problem, even though it may have reduced the "trauma" of
a drug addict, being called an "addict".

 

[truthpls]

Note that this decision by the Oregon Department of Education, was AGAINST
the wishes of most Oregon voters.

The argument of the Department seems to be that giving a student a failing
grade, would traumatize them.

Right, but helping them kill their babies and change their sex is helping them etc

Well, how will these failing students NOT be traumatized, when they cannot
hold down any job but pouring coffee at a Starbucks store?

It is not so much the coffee poured out that hurts them, but what is poured into them in school and at home and on the net etc.

Note that the utopian liberals in Oregon, have reversed their decision to
legalize formerly illegal drugs. THAT legalization, did not contain the illegal
drug addiction problem, even though it may have reduced the "trauma" of
a drug addict, being called an "addict".

Right, they are flailing around in the dark with no moral compass.

 

[The Barbarian]

Hey, it worked for Donald Trump.

May 2020
If you're reading this sentence, you've read more than the president has today.
White House trade adviser Peter Navarro wrote a memo in January warning of "a full-blown coronavirus outbreak on U.S. soil." Trump said he didn't see it because "Peter sends a lot of memos," none of which he reads.

Trump's lethal aversion to reading

The president's coronavirus response illustrates the perils of bibliophobia

theweek.com

He's apparently never read a book.

 

[The Barbarian]

It should be noted that many states, such as Florida, have tried to improve education by "raising standards" via tougher achievement tests. How has that worked?

Florida has the third-highest percentage of adults lacking basic prose literacy skills of 19.7%, equaling a literacy rate of 80.3%.

U.S. Literacy Rates by State 2024

“Florida is the number one state in the country for education,” said Governor Ron DeSantis.

Governor DeSantis Signs Legislation to Further Enhance Education in Florida

www.flgov.com

You betcha, Ron.

It's very clear that "raising standards" without doing a better job of education is like passing laws against hailstorms.

 

[The Barbarian]

Standardized testing is fine. It just takes a lot of work to make sure you're testing for what you're teaching and closely studying and understanding your test results for each and every quesiton.

There's nothing wrong with "teaching for the test" if you know you're testing for the knowledge you want. But you have to keep all the statistics surrounding your testing procedure and the data of how statistics change when elements of the test or the teaching methods or the student environments change. When that happens properly, standardized testing will point out accurately where inadequate teaching has occurred.

Let's say you have a 100-question test. You can divide the test takers of each year into upper- and lower- scoring halves. The presumption will be that the upper half has, for perhaps various reasons, learned the material better than the lower half. But we want to know why they learned better.

Let's say that there is one question that is missed not only by nearly everyone in the lower half, but also a large percentage of people in the upper half. If the people who otherwise learned better also tended to get that particular question wrong...then there's something wrong with the question. OTOH, if everyone in the upper half got a question right--and so did most of the people in the lower half--then there is still something wrong with the question. You want students who have learned the subject to get the question right (no trick questions!), but you also want students who have not learned the subject to get the question wrong (no giveaways!).

Do the results show the students in the lower half are deficient in specific areas? If your questions are written properly, that should become apparent. A good standardized test should worry the educators as much as it worries the students.

Today's winner.

Every state does item analysis, but not all of them do it for the purpose of making the test a better discriminator of learning. And fewer of them do it to actually see how a student has become more proficient for any given year.

When I retired from industry, I became a teacher. I once did an analysis showing how far my students had progressed over the year by showing where they were at the end of the previous year, and where they were at the end of the current year, by element.

An administrator remarked, "that is not what the test was meant to show." My response was that the data allowed such an analysis, and that the amount of academic progress each student made in a given year for each element was a rather important thing to know. (Much dithering and principlesplaining)

And yes, I did the analysis, because it happened to make me look good.

 

[RDKirk]

When I retired from industry, I became a teacher. I once did an analysis showing how far my students had progressed over the year by showing where they were at the end of the previous year, and where they were at the end of the current year, by element.

In the military, that measure of progress is the basis of a troop's performance report. A troop who has progressed from below average to "meets standards" can thus get a better performance report than a troop who has simply maintained "meets standards."

An administrator remarked, "that is not what the test was meant to show." My response was that the data allowed such an analysis, and that the amount of academic progress each student made in a given year for each element was a rather important thing to know. (Much dithering and principlesplaining)

If you testing process is good enough to produce a good array of data, you can come to some unexpected conclusions in areas not before anticipated. I'm thinking the administrator had to figure out how to make sure your information didn't make them and the tenured teachers look bad.

And yes, I did the analysis, because it happened to make me look good.

If you can convince them that your new areas of information are, indeed, valid...and also make them look good.

 

[The Barbarian]

In the military, that measure of progress is the basis of a troop's performance report.

Warfare has a way of encouraging useful metrics.