Seth Godin Discusses Failure of Educational Model

Best selling author Seth Godin discusses the failure of our educational model that's built around producing factory workers.

Godin explains that it wouldn't take very many passionate parents to start schools down the right path. Parents just need to realize that they and their children own the learning and they are not the property of the government. For ideas on how to do this read my free guide downloadable from the right column on this blog: Fix The Schools, Not the Child.


Source: http://www.LeeStranahan.com
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Why I Don't Like Standardized Tests

Guest post by Cathy Earle

As an educator, I am sometimes called upon to teach children test preparation skills. I do so because these particular children are going to have to take a particular test – it's a reality. However, the first step of my test prep lesson is to tell the children that I don't like standardized tests, especially high-stakes tests. I don't believe they should have to take them, and, I tell them, I didn't subject my own kids to them.

Here are my major reasons for my antipathy toward standardized tests:

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Disorganized Sports + Unstructured Play

When asking children: 

What is your favorite part of school?

It is not uncommon to get this answer:  

Recess!!!

I still like to play :)

Sadly, in schools today, recess is on it's way toward extinction.  On a parenting group I belong to, student's back to school schedules were shared.  Sadly, very few included time for recess. Yet at a recent conference I listened to brain researcher John Medena  who shared that activity, movement, and exercise is crucial for boosting brain power.  Not only does play make you smarter, this article points to play being a great way to alleviate ADD / ADHD symptoms. Unfortunately, educators are in a state of panic in our test prep obsessed education system, no longer able to think clearly about what is truly best for our children. 

If today's teachers and administrators had the opportunity to pull themselves away from the worksheets and bubblesheets they would find that play is an essential component of student success as pointed to in the article Can We Play by Psychologist David Elkin.  In the article Elkin shares that recess is already extinct in more than 30,000 U.S. schools that have eliminated recess to make more time for academics and that children’s time spent outdoors has fallen 50 percent since the 1990s.
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The Kids Know Best - They Don't Want the Test!

Kids are speaking out!

Last June I shared a frustrated 5th Grader's Smart Advice About Standardized Testing. Today I bring you 12-year-old Anthony Herrera who was a victim of K12Online and South Carolina Virtual Charter Choice to Make Profit Even If It Means Making Children Sick. Anthony wrote the letter and taped the video below because he wanted to tell people what's going on, and thank everyone for the support he and his family have been receiving from those who value the well-being of children over test scores.  



Here is Anthony's letter.
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Uniting to Ensure Best Options for Students, Parents and Teachers

This post was also shared at Cooperative Catalyst.  If you'd like to read it there go here.  There are some really good comments!


Social media has become a mobilizing force in bringing together students, educators, and parents who are frustrated with the data-driven, standardized, one-size-fits all learning taking place in publicly funded schools today. Many of these groups have popped up with members joining and uniting against a system designed to reduce children to nothing more than standardized, easily measurable data to appear on a future chart that can bolster the ratings and egos of policy makers and business leaders.  Despite the fact that many educational leaders, educators, parents, and students know this is wrong parents like Gretchen Herrera are being forced to engage in practices that hurt children with threats of school closures and students being left behind or kicked out for failure to comply.

One of the biggest movements gaining momentum is the opt out of state testing with social media sites being created in the form Facebook groups, Facebook pages, and Yahoo groups which are connecting parents, educators, and students who are frustrated with forced government schooling policies.  In the past there was little information available to the public when it came to opting out of tests. Not surprisingly this information was hard to access and inconsistent.  This is, in part what the government agencies are banking on.

Fortunately with the advent of social media and Web 2.0 tools, concerned individuals are able to unite to find, share, and collect information.  One such effort to collect this information is The Opt Out of State Standardized Tests – Site.  Upon joining, group members can contribute relevant information from their state.  The beauty of this site is that the information is created and owned by anyone concerned about this issue.  The site is open to all concerned individuals who can find general and state by state information as well as a number of social media groups and pages to join.
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A Fundamental Principle: No Unnecessary Testing (NUT)

By Stephen Krashen | Original PDF

Summary: Do not invest 4.5 billion on new standards and tests. Instead, work on
improving the NAEP to get a picture of how our students are performing, and
continue to use teacher evaluation to evaluate individual student performance. We
should begin by cutting back testing, not adding testing.

No Unnecessary Testing (NUT) is the principle that school should include only those
tests and parts of tests that are necessary, that contribute to essential evaluation and
learning. Every minute testing and doing “test preparation” (activities to boost scores on
tests that do not involve genuine learning) is stolen from students’ lives, in addition to
costing money that we cannot afford these days.

If we accept the NUT principle, it leads to this question: Do we need yearly standardized
tests closely linked to the curriculum? Do they tell us more than teacher evaluation does?
This issue must be looked at scientifically. If, for example, standardized tests given in
every stage are shortened, given less frequently or abandoned, will student performance
be affected? Would NAEP scores be affected, or high school graduation rates, or life
success?

My prediction is that teacher evaluation does a better job of evaluating students than
standardized testing: The repeated judgments of professionals who are with children
every day is more valid that a test created by distant strangers. Moreover, teacher
evaluations are “multiple measures,” are closely aligned to the curriculum, and cover a
variety of subjects.

There is evidence supporting this view for high school students: In a study published in
2007, UC Berkeley scholars Saul Geiser and Maria Veronica Saltelices found that adding
SAT scores to high school students grades in college prep courses did not provide much
more information than grades alone, which suggests that we may not need standardized
tests at all. More recently, Bowen, Chingos, and McPherson (2009) reached similar
conclusions.

For those who argue that we need national standardized tests in order to compare student
achievement over time and to compare subgroups of students, we already have an
instrument for this, the NAEP.

The NAEP is administered to small groups of children who each take a portion of the test
every few years. Results are extrapolated to estimate how the larger groups would score.
No test prep is done, as the tests are zero stakes: There are no (or should be no)
consequences for low or high scores. Our efforts should be to improve the NAEP, not
start all over again, and go through years of fine-tuning with new instruments.

Gradually improving the NAEP will also solve the "standards" problem, as the NAEP is
adjusted to reflect competencies experts in education consider to be important.

If we are interested in a general picture of how children are doing, this is the way to do it.
If we are interested in finding out about a patient’s health, we only need to look at a small
sample of their blood, not all of it.

My predictions, however, need to be put to the empirical test. A conservative path is to
start to cut back on standardized tests, both in length and frequency, and determine if this
has any negative consequences.

A radical path is to throw everything we have out, without any evidence that it is
inadequate, and waste $4.5 billion on new standards and new tests, tests for all subjects
and to be given to every child every year.

The conservative path is the only rational option, when funds are so scarce, and it is an
essential exercise of our responsibility to students. It is also the solution to those who are
calling for a longer school year and a longer school day: less time testing and doing testprep
means more time for instruction and learning.

Bowen, W., Chingos, M., and McPherson, M. 2009. Crossing the Finish Line:
Completing College at America's Universities. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Geiser, S. and Santelices, M.V., 2007. Validity of high-school grades in predicting
student success beyond the freshman year: High-school record vs. standardized tests as
indicators of four-year college outcomes. Research and Occasional Papers Series: CSHE
6.07, University of California, Berkeley. http://cshe.berkeley.edu