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23 hours a year is "overwhelming"? That's 40 minutes/week, assuming a 36 week school year. In other news, I'm overwhelmed by brushing my teeth. Incidentally,

23 hours a year is "overwhelming"? That's 40 minutes/week, assuming a 36 week school year. In other news, I'm overwhelmed by brushing my teeth. Incidentally, since I'm sure a bunch of people will spout the "teaching to the test" slogan, I'd love it if someone could look at these real tests and explain how to teach to them without improving student learning. Somehow I suspect not, because real tests are actually reasonably well designed and "teaching to the test" is actually just "teaching". http://www.cde.ca.gov/ta/tg/sr/documents/cstrtqmath7.pdf http://www.cde.ca.gov/ta/tg/sr/documents/cstrtqmath7.pdf http://www.nysedregents.org/Grade8/Mathematics/20100505book1.pdf http://www.nysedregents.org/Grade8/Mathematics/20100505book1... http://www.nysedregents.org/Grade8/EnglishLanguageArts/042610book1w.pdf http://www.nysedregents.org/Grade8/EnglishLanguageArts/04261...

hga 11y ago
And most of this anti-testing stuff ignores the reason the whole regieme was established in the first place: too many schools weren't even pretending to teach their students the most basic of things, including the 3Rs (heck, phonics vs. "Dick and Jane and Their Running dog Spot" is still being fought 60 years after Why Johnny Can't Read was published). I'm certain it's being taken too far without caring about the consequences (which we could point out as another example of how dysfunctional our public schools have become, see above, in the latter half of the 20th Century they simply didn't care if their graduates could read), but graduating from high school in 1979 I was at the edge of the beginning of this in Missouri. And the test was simple (well, after the SATs and College Board achievement tests :-) and covered entirely relevant stuff, things you really should be able to do to earn a high school diploma. This in fact has a lot to do with out current insane college finance regime; the high school diploma became an entirely worthless signal, so when combined with Griggs v. Duke Power, the non-free for the student college degree has become the new signal of minimum competence.

hga 11y ago

And most of this anti-testing stuff ignores the reason the whole regieme was established in the first place: too many schools weren't even pretending to teach their students the most basic of things, including the 3Rs (heck, phonics vs. "Dick and Jane and Their Running dog Spot" is still being fought 60 years after Why Johnny Can't Read was published). I'm certain it's being taken too far without caring about the consequences (which we could point out as another example of how dysfunctional our public schools have become, see above, in the latter half of the 20th Century they simply didn't care if their graduates could read), but graduating from high school in 1979 I was at the edge of the beginning of this in Missouri. And the test was simple (well, after the SATs and College Board achievement tests :-) and covered entirely relevant stuff, things you really should be able to do to earn a high school diploma. This in fact has a lot to do with out current insane college finance regime; the high school diploma became an entirely worthless signal, so when combined with Griggs v. Duke Power, the non-free for the student college degree has become the new signal of minimum competence.