Love the headline of this article: "HISD superintendent intends to improve test scores by teaching content to children. It just might work."
The Houston Independent School District has been giving its pupils an examination overdose, and new Superintendent Abe Saavedra wants to shift the focus from testing to instruction. If Saavedra can tamp down the wasted hours spent on unnecessary tests and on rote drills that teach narrowly to the tests, teachers might find they have time to instill in their charges some useful knowledge and intellectual skills that would come in handy on any test, whether in the classroom or later life.
Teachers have complained for years that principals hound them mercilessly to produce classrooms full of high scorers on the Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills. A principal's bonus rides at least partly on how well the students perform, and so does the reputation of the school. Students at four grade levels are required to pass the TAKS to move to the next grade or graduate. The intense pressure has induced some teachers and administrators to cheat.
Saavedra says he wants to relieve some of that pressure by changing HISD's climate to one that emphasizes teaching.
So Texas is facing a gigantic cheating scandal, and we're supposed to believe that the solution is to stop giving the tests. Oh, and we should allow teachers to return to teaching in such a way that they needn't focus on those narrow basic skills, and to realize that teachers shouldn't be assessed by test scores.
I should note that I don't entirely disagree with these statements. But, given the reasons that the testing was implemented in the first place, forgive me for being skeptical about the motives here. I'd like to see a focus return to real education, yes, but I have a suspicion that "real education" may be interpreted here as touchy-feely, unscientific thinking that can't be measured by any objective outcomes.
Posted by kswygert at February 6, 2005 05:29 PM