NJ State Testing Just Washed Away

Now what? Sandy is a game changer here in New Jersey. These endless standardized tests and the mounds of money spent on this garbage is now finally being exposed as the state grapples with no way to administer and account for the VAM, value added measures. How many points for what trauma. The social, psychological, emotional and financial toll from a storm like this one, and how many "points" should be subtracted or added to an already meaningless bean counting machine for children, will be impossible to calculate. This was the perfect storm indeed, the one we needed to get rid of the phony, money grubbing education deformers here in New Jersey. We can only hope they will be washed away into the sewer they created for themselves by forcing mindless crap on America's school children for the past three decades.

Time for the students and parents to just opt out  of the stupid tests (go to United Opt Out National ) and just put down your pencils. Then you can begin to think again, learn and innovate and figure out a way to rebuild your communities. Find ways to stop the damage being done to the environment as Exxon runs commercials about how important teachers are while controlling the science curriculum on climate change and energy.

Duncan, ever heard of Service Learning? Didn't think so. Perhaps some of the RTTT funds for measuring and testing and holding teachers accountable for students' scores, scores of homeless, neglected, hungry and poor students, the ones who are now in shelters all across the northeast, could go to rebuild those schools and communities. Is that "common" core standard on the NJ ASK?

New Jersey school testing has been disrupted by hurricane Sandy.

Days lost to hurricane put New Jersey schools to the test

Posted By John Mooney On November 2, 2012 @ 2:59 pm In K-12,News | No Comments

New Jersey Spotlight ^[1]

On top of Hurricane Sandy’s immediate devastation throughout the state, public schools and their students could feel the storm’s disruption well into next year.
Schools were reopening today in many parts of the state, state officials said, but hundreds of districts remained closed for a fifth straight day and maybe into next week as power was slow to be restored in vast swaths of New Jersey.
That left school officials grappling with how to make up days on a calendar that had only just begun, with the state’s 180-day requirement unlikely to budge, if history is any indication.
In 1995, districts saw snow days pile up into the teens, but the state did not waive the 180-day statutory mandate and instead required districts to make up the days elsewhere, including shortening winter, spring or summer breaks.
State officials yesterday said any such decisions would be premature, but others said they expected districts would need to make up the days as best they can. Most have two or three snow days already built in, but any days on top of that would come out of the existing calendar.

Learning Breaks Out in Britain During Testing Boycott That Affects 300,000 Children

Half of the 600,000 10 and 11 year-old children this morning (in Britain) will be reading books, poetry, and telling stories, rather than taking another meaningless standardized test. The boycott will continue through Wednesday. What joy, and what joy if only the prostisuits who run the NEA and the AFT would honor their Code of Ethics against child abuse here in America? From The Independent:

By Richard Garner, Education Editor

As many as 300,000 11-year-olds will find their national curriculum tests cancelled this morning.

The estimate of the amount of disruption caused by a boycott of the tests - in maths and English - increased yesterday. Christine Blower, general secretary of the National Union of Teachers, said that the number of schools backing the boycott ranged from 30 per cent to 75 per cent from local authority to local authority. Overall, about half of the 17,000 schools due to sit the tests are set to abandon them.

Ms Blower added that, if no agreement could be reached on reviewing the tests and scrapping exam league tables derived from them, the boycott could be repeated next year.

"We would have to consider that," she said. "The purpose of the boycott is to get rid of the SATs (national curriculum tests). If we had a different series of tests and a categorical agreement there would be no league tables, then obviously that would be different."

Both Labour and the Conservatives are committed to the test going ahead. However, teachers' leaders are pinning their hopes on Liberal Democrat involvement in the new government because the party spoke out against the tests and exam league tables during the election campaign.

The NUT - along with the National Association of Head Teachers - has voted in favour of boycotting the tests because they believe the importance placed on them - with performance tables based on their results - has forced schools to teach to the tests at the expense of the broader curriculum.

It will mean headteachers refuse to distribute the test papers to pupils but otherwise remain at work.

Teachers' leaders believe the rise in the numbers of heads boycotting the tests could be down their feeling less fearful of the the threat of reprisals as a result of the stalemate over the formation of the new government.

The Schools Secretary Ed Balls had urged school governors to consider sending heads home if they refused to administer the tests - and said they should consider appointing another "competent" adult to ensure they went ahead.

However, the National Governors' Association - which represents school governing bodies - warned of the dangers inherent in such action.

"The NGA would not advise any governing body to go ahead without considering how they could fund any legal dispute which arose from this request," it says. "The unions are highly likely to challenge any employer who requests an employee be sent home (who is only carrying out part of their duties as a result of industrial action)."

Meanwhile, at an anti-SATs rally in London's Jubilee Gardens yesterday, children's authors revealed they would be going into schools to read poetry and tell stories to provide pupils with an alternative to the SATs.

The author Alan Gibbons said at the rally: "We will be conducting poetry sessions, reading books and doing story-telling activities - trying to show an alternative approach to SATs."

More than 90 children's authors and illustrators signed an open letter to the Government warning that the tests were switching pupils off reading because they concentrated on learning excerpts from books for the tests rather than reading the whole story.

Ms Blower told the rally: "We are standing up and saying we must get rid of the SATs and the league tables. Let's make sure that every child has a great year unencumbered by ridiculous tests and make schools a SATs-free zone."

The first test - English reading - is due to take place today and will be followed by three more days of tests. These include a writing test and two maths tests, one concentrating on mental arithmetic.