The almighty school test

David Berliner is an enemy of school testing programs and particularly what No Child Left Behind has wrought. He provides six reasons why rising test scores don’t necessarily indicate increased learning. An example:

Virtually all states have changed the passing score on tests so that more children are classified proficient.

NCLB is bizarre since it requires that 100 percent of the children at a school need to be “proficient” in reading and mathematics by 2014. But at what score is one proficient?

The choice of a score for “passing” a test, or for being labeled “proficient,” “basic” or “exemplary,” are value-laden choices. They have little to do with statistics and measurement, and are, instead, political decisions.

Have you ever driven down Dave Grohl Alley in Warren, Ohio? Grohl, as in Foo Fighters fame. Jon Wilde, writing in the Guardian, says there are dozen of streets named after rock stars or bands, but a bridge? Now that’s a rare honor. More here.

Brisbane’s Hale Street Link is renowned as one of the finest bridges in the area. From now it will be proudly known as Go-Between Bridge. Robert Forster even turned up wearing a hard hat to cut the ribbon, or whatever you do when a bridge is renamed after your band.

Posted in Education, It's life.