Schools in New York City are trying to figure out the best way to determine which kids should be eligible for the city’s gifted and talented kindergarten program. Education chancellor Joel Klein favors using a score on a standardized test –the cutoff for admission is the 90th percentile–because it’s not subjective. This is the process [...]
Trip Gabriel at the NYT reports on test-taking at a school in Queens: Multiple choice: New York State’s fifth-grade social studies test was given Nov. 16 and 17. After students completed the test, which of the following should NOT have occurred: (A) Students waited patiently to learn the results. (B) Students enjoyed the week without [...]
We know what happens when kids get an answer wrong on a standardized test. But what do we do when the test-makers give the wrong answers? That’s what Terry Stoops of the John Locke Foundation foundation is asking at Insider Online. Between February and April 2010, the John Locke Foundation asked over 500 college and [...]
A Brooklyn teacher hired to grade the fourth-grade math test in New York was outraged enough at the scoring procedure to blow the whistle: Students received credit for incorrect answers, partial answers, and sometimes for no answer at all. According to the scoring guidelines: These questions ask students to show their work. The scoring guidelines, [...]
The Dayton (Ohio) Daily News reports that Ohio is abandoning the Ohio Graduation Test (OGT). The college entrance exam (ACT) is being considered as an alternative. The OGT replaced another proficiency test in 2005. One school superintendent observed: “I get concerned that it’s hard to show improvement when you keep changing the test.”
Ohio education blogger Colleen Grady asks some good questions about graduation requirements and the Ohio Graduation Test (OGT). Thirty-two Middletown seniors who failed the OGT were not allowed to walk with their class at commencement. But three others were. These students passed an “alternate assessment.” According to the Ohio Revised Code, students can use the [...]
The folks who designed the No Child Left Behind legislation no doubt had their collective hearts in the right place, but they neglected to take human nature into account. After all, increasing student learning isn’t the only way to meet proficiency goals. Another way is to define down what it means to be proficient. And [...]
Samuel Freedman’s On Religion piece at the NYT–an interesting take on Diane Ravitch’s new must-read– argues that the proliferation of free charter schools hurts urban tuition-charging Catholic schools. Not all alternatives to failing public schools are equal, though, and Catholic schools are still the only ones to offer the things that public schools– by definition– [...]