"A child's learning is the function more of the characteristics of his classmates than those of the teacher." James Coleman, 1972

Friday, March 24, 2006

Tell 'Em Betty

Is the NAACP listening? Or are they too busy buying into the hard bigotry of unrealistic expectations and the stupidification that NCLB guarantees will perpetuate this unbridled corporate greed and oppression.

Connecticut's education commissioner Betty Sternberg:
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"This law does little to create an academically astute, responsible, caring, compassionate and wise citizenry."
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That's the idea, now, isn't it Betty?


More Required Tests Won't Solve Education Problems
March 24, 2006

Full testing requirements of the federal No Child Left Behind Act have begun. Nationwide, approximately 26 million students in grades 3-8 and one high school grade will be tested this year. Roughly 1.3 billion test pages - 5.8 billion test items - will be graded by a handful of companies.In Connecticut this month, more than 300,000 students are wrestling with about 12.6 million test pages and roughly 63 million questions.

What will this massive testing tell us that we don't already know? Nothing. In general, wealthier students do better than poorer students, non-minority students do better than minority students, students without disabilities do better than students with disabilities, and there are significant gaps among urban, suburban and rural students.We need to reform our system to incorporate accountability and provide to all children programs that we know, based on research, will diminish these gaps.
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Someone needs to tell that to the CT NAACP.

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