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DEL.ICIO.USWhat’s in Store for ‘05
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
With the Legislature back in session, the Georgia Partnership for Excellence in Education has issued a top ten list of school issues to watch in 2005. The group, headed by former Fulton County Superintendent Stephen Dolinger, says it doesn’t lobby for or against controversial issues like vouchers. Instead the organization pulls together nonpartisan research and national examples of so-called best practices.
- Achievement Gap Goes to College. (Addressing disparities in college completion rates)
- Addressing the B in NCLB - America and Georgia’s Achievement Gap
- Money, Money, and the Lack of Money
- What’s New? Performance Standards and the SAT. (This refers to Georgia’s new curriculum and to the New SAT, which students will take this spring)
- The New IDEA (The federal law requiring schools to education students with disabilities)
- Retention Still Has a Place at the Table (This year, fifth-graders must pass a math and reading test to advance to middle school)
- The Future of School Choice (i.e. Vouchers)
- Early Learning Matters Most
- High School Matters (Nationally, there’s a huge trend toward high school reform)
- Merit Pay for Teachers (Huh? This one surprised me a little, but sure enough there’s already a concept on the table to recognize “master teachers.”)
Comments
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By Peggy
January 14, 2005 08:41 AM | Link to this
An article in the AJC January 13 reports that President Bush wants to add more testing to NCLB, bringing high schools into line with elementary schools. High schoolers are already being excessively tested with mandatory PSATs, SATs, end-of-course tests, and high school graduation tests. We’re going to keep on until the only purpose school serves is to prepare kids for narrow tests.
By Greg Crider
January 14, 2005 01:18 PM | Link to this
Students in Georgia already often lose 10 or more days out of the 180 days in the school year to testing. Testing even more and taking them out of class those days is supposed to help them learn?
By chuck
January 19, 2005 08:58 AM | Link to this
As an 8th grade teacher, I lose the most days of instruction for testing in the entire educational system. We give the Differential Aptitude Test for 3 days, the ITBS for 5 days, the Middle Grades Writing Assessment for 2 days, the CRCT for 5 days, and in our system we give 4 practice CRCT’s spread throughout the year. That is a grand total of 19 days or 10.5% of our instructional time. By yhe time we get to the last test…the one that is used for accountability purpose, the kids are burned out on testing. I shouldn’t really complain. 97% of my students met or exceeded the standard on the CRCT. What really bothers me is that I’ve had to cut back on the deeper content that I used to get into with my kids. I don’t take as many field trips as I used to and my enrichment activities had to be scaled back as well. I’m fortunate to have students that can really excel on the tests, but there is more to life than tests. Unlike many teachers, I am all for accountability. I just would like to see a more common sense approach. Let’s give our kids a test at the beginning of the year to see what they know, and one at the end of the year to see how much they learned. Hold me accountable for making sure that all of my students progress from where they started. I think most teachers would accept that more than the system we are using now.