More on the education policies from our Presidential candidates:
Roger Giroux, superintendent of the Anoka-Hennepin School District, remembers the old days, when every child wasn't expected to pass every test. If every child passed, "that was a sign of a poor test," Giroux said. "Tests are supposed to discriminate on the performance levels of kids."
If Giroux had five minutes with President Bush, he'd ask him one question about the federal No Child Left Behind Act, which requires yearly tests in reading and math for all students in grades 3 through 8: "Mr. President, at what price are we to make sure that every child passes the test, given limited resources?"
It's a big question in the 2004 presidential race.
I understand Giroux's point, but NCLB isn't about challenging tests. It's about minimum-competecy testing, which is why the howls of indignation about the "unfairness" of the tests are often incorrect.
Kerry contends that schools need another $27 billion to implement the law and says that the current funding shortage has left schools too little money to spend on other things, such as smaller classes, textbooks and after-school programs. And he said the situation has been made worse by the president's pursuit of tax cuts for the wealthy.
Bush's supporters say it's natural for opponents to complain about a lack of money. "There will always be a complaint by some that education -- or anything, for that matter, any program or any project -- is underfunded," said Rep. John Kline, R-Minn., a member of the House Education Committee. He said the federally mandated tests are needed to ensure accountability to the public.
Education Secretary Rod Paige said the debate over how to fix the nation's schools is about much more than money. From 1965 to 2000, he said, the federal government spent more than $130 billion on programs for disadvantaged students, but "the money seems to have made little difference." The new law, he said, "is making a positive difference in millions of lives" because schools are being forced to show that they're accountable for the money they're spending.
Money without accountability is a waste.
If schools are not testing, that's "punishing children," Bush said, because schools then have no idea how their students are performing.
"I went to Washington to challenge the soft bigotry of low expectations," Bush said in a speech in Chanhassen earlier this month. "I felt strongly we needed to end this business about just shuffling the kids through, grade after grade, year after year, without teaching the basics. We've raised the standards. We measure early to solve problems before it's too late."
...On its Web site, the Kerry campaign complains that too many states are measuring student performance "with fill-in-the-bubble tests that limit both teaching and learning." While Kerry says he's committed to making the law work, he is promising to support states that use more "sophisticated tests that capture the full range of skills that we want students to develop."
Wow, I hope he's planning on plowing a lot more money into the system, then. And when are these new exams going to be pilot-tested and validated?
Many educational critics say that schools are already spending too much time on testing, which takes away from instructional time.
Not if they're good tests, and not if the curriculum is in agreement with the testing standards.
Posted by kswygert at October 25, 2004 11:29 AM