The NCLB Act is "hard work," educators tell business leaders. Imagine that:
Superintendents for the Gainesville and Hall County school systems paired up Thursday to talk to area business leaders about the federal No Child Left Behind Act...
By 2014, every student in the nation, no matter their language or educational limitations, must meet or exceed state standards for academic achievement, with the standardized test pass rates increasing every year until then.
"There's a lot of things we've got to change in our school and our communities before we can achieve 100 percent of anything," [Gainesville Superintendent Steven] Ballowe told the group, gathered at the Georgia Mountains Center. "... Schools have become the lightning rod of all that's wrong in society."
[Hall Superintendent Dennis] Fordham said that the nation's educational direction has shifted.
"If we look at public education today, the goal of universal access has been achieved," he said. "No Child Left Behind is the first federal act aimed directly at the goal of universal proficiency."
Standardized tests do "better at finding out what you can remember, (such as) dates and facts," Fordham said. "But when it comes to deeper understanding, they're not as good as they claim to be."
Actually, standardized tests can be as good as they claim to be for measuring "deeper understanding," if the items are well-written and the subject material is well-integrated. There are a few guidelines out there for writing good test items of this type; this manual, by Case and Swanson, is adaptable to many item types, is used in many item-writing workshops, and is considered to be somewhat of an industry standard. But that's a lecture for another day.
I'm not sure why this speech needed to be given to the Greater Hall Chamber of Commerce's board of directors. Perhaps some of you readers can enlighten me.
Posted by kswygert at September 29, 2003 02:26 PM