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

Monday, September 07, 2015

TNReady = Common Core = More Failure

The Tennessee Department of Education continues its Huffman-esque tradition of making up its own facts and handing them off to the Tennessean, where clueless interns and corporate reporters copy and paste them up as news stories.  

A couple of weeks ago the big propaganda piece was posted at the Department's website with this lie as a headline: "Tennessee Students Hit Five Year High on ACT."  The Tennessean loyally followed the press release, rather than checking the ACT website (links here), which clearly showed the State was making it up.

The Times-Free Press did check the ACT website and got it right, and the Memphis Corporate Commercial Appeal plastered up Chalkbeat's story, which also printed the State's misinformation (see comment following story).

This morning the Tennessean's chief corporate education reporter from neighboring ultra-white Williamson County was pumping the State's "progress" on getting schools ready (buying PCs and networking infrastructure) to take next year's Common Core tests, which bear the new label, TNReady.

Indeed, it would be impressive if Tennessee were 90% ready for the online testing, as the state's media arm reports.  A school system is deemed ready by the state, however, if it has one station for every six students, regardless of age or condition.

The state is planning its first dry run this fall, with a system "stress test."  The real stress test will come next spring, and we will see how our smallest and most precious biological systems hold up.  Expect huge failure rates and more clamoring for accelerating the segregating charter privatization agenda.

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