What Does Michigan’s Superintendent of Education And Joe Biden Have To Say About Standardized Test For Our Children
Unfortunately, I must bring you very bad news for our students but very good news for the teacher's unions and anyone who supported not having in-classroom training for the 2020/2021 school year.
Joe Biden just made it easier for Governors, teachers unions, teachers and administrations to hide the academic devastation they brought to public-educated American schoolchildren over the last year.
The AP is reporting that Biden has decided to give public school systems the ability to give a very shortened standardized test with much “lower stakes” and get this, most children will not even have to take the test. For instance, in New York City students must inform the district they do want to take the standardized test. The article informs us that most students in Los Angeles CA, are not being asked to take the state exams this year.
Believe it or not, there were many states that actually lobbied Biden to cancel the standardized tests for the second year in a row.
Ask yourself why they would want to cancel these tests and why do you think Biden is allowing this to happen? The only ones who will suffer from this decision are the students. Without having a very good baseline of where the children are academically how can any state or district plan be created to address what the children will need to make up for almost a year and a half of no in-classroom training at many schools.
As the AP stated:
“The lenient approach means large swaths of students will go untested, shattering hopes for a full picture of how much learning has been set back by the pandemic.’
If the AP writes that about a Democrat President you know it must be really bad news and they just cannot hide it.
After hearing what Biden is allowing, Robin Lake, director of the Center on Reinventing Public Education at the University of Washington said:
“We will end up with a highly imperfect set of data...This is something our country will have to commit to tracking and learning about for at least the next few years, and maybe the next decade.”
What does Michigan's Superintendent of Education Mike Rice have to say about testing this year? He said that schools around Michigan have already taken tests to assess their progress or lack thereof and more tests:
“will inform precisely nothing about our children’s needs”
How will more testing tell us absolutely nothing about their needs Mike? Or are you concerned about what this testing will show about the education they received under your leadership?
I believe you need these standardized tests in order to determine where the children are academically at that point in time. Those results will give you and other education leaders the basis on which to create a plan to address their needs?
Again ask yourself why these states, school districts and teacher unions are so against all students having to take these standardized tests?
My thought is they are very afraid of what that testing will uncover and expose.
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