Cashing in on pre-K testing

[Disir]

Sandy Kress, the controversial testing lobbyist, is leading a new raid on school taxes. This month he registered to lobby for Amplify, the company that wants to replace textbooks with tablet computers, positioning him to grab some of the hundreds of millions of dollars Education Secretary Arne Duncan is offering to create pre-K tests. Despite a nationwide backlash against high-stakes testing, your tax dollars are now going to developing standardized tests for 4-year-olds, and Kress is ready to cash in.

Kress was the architect of No Child Left Behind who then lobbied for Pearson Education while simultaneously serving on several state advisory boards. Kress became so unpopular amid an anti-testing rebellion in Texas that the legislature made it illegal for him or any other testing lobbyist to make campaign contributions. Even registered sex offenders can give politicians money in Texas.

But now the Obama administration is pushing a new and (pardon the pun) untested theory that we can use student scores to measure teacher effectiveness. To compete for Race to the Top funds, states have to figure out how to use standardized test scores to measure the effectiveness of teachers, something education historian Diane Ravitch has called “junk science.”

This is really a new low. Four year olds?

 

[editec]

Educational THEORIES are usually junk science.

Now usually these junk ED theories come from our liberal chums, but the worst of them all "No child left Behind" comes from our rightest masters.

 

[HelenaHandbag]

Educational THEORIES are usually junk science.

Now usually these junk ED theories come from our liberal chums, but the worst of them all "No child left Behind" comes from our rightest masters.

Ted Kennedy was a rightist?

Learn something new every day!

 

[Disir]

Educational THEORIES are usually junk science.

Now usually these junk ED theories come from our liberal chums, but the worst of them all "No child left Behind" comes from our rightest masters.

Actually, Bill Clinton signed The Goals 2000: Educate America Act and then it was reauthorized as NCLB under Bush.

There are good theories. Application is a whole 'nother problem. This, however, is just handing over great quantities of tax dollars to testing companies that don't accomplish anything-unless we are lining the pockets of test creators that are usually the very same as text book publishers.

 

[editec]

Educational THEORIES are usually junk science.

Now usually these junk ED theories come from our liberal chums, but the worst of them all "No child left Behind" comes from our rightest masters.

Ted Kennedy was a rightist?

Learn something new every day!

GOOD POINT Helena, I stand corrected.

Nearly ALL the masters' tools got together to shove this crap down our educational system's throat.

I'd forgotten that NCLB became a partisan bargaining chip in a political crap game.