MUST READ - FOR TEACHERS, PARENTS: People have told me to my face that I make stuff up about these tests. I have never revealed a precise question (like in this story), but after spending 3 days in Atlanta reviewing 120 seventh grade social studies questions from McGraw Hill in the summer of 2010, learning that 40% of students are "supposed to miss each question" in order for the question to be valid, I have raised questions.

I have many friends with kids in school now. I have many former students with children in school now. I see it as a community service to tell you that these tests mean nothing! They are not predictors of future success, happiness, or value. These tests are tools for people who refuse to take the time to know your kids on a personal level (and relieve them of any necessity to do so) to treat your child as data rather than a person.

Testing is the 21st century form of child labor in which Pearson, McGraw Hill, and other publishers, as well as politicians are making billions of dollars off the labor of children who have been trapped in schools and forced to take these tests.

The one thing I tell my students consistently about these tests, is that they are not supposed to do well. The job my students have is to prove wrong the people who do not care about them, who want them to fail, and expect them to remain in the lower rungs of society, based on answering questions that prove nothing of their intelligence, knowledge, or potential.

It seems to me that the cover of the test question books should be emblazoned with their motto of hopelessness - MAY THE ODDS BE EVER IN YOUR FAVOR.

As increasing numbers of us use online resources and social media in connection with our jobs as well as our personal lives, we need to realise how many of our "co-workers" are in fact algorithms, because we will have to live up to their standards. Bots are becoming our peers.

It used to be an insult to speak of someone "behaving mechanically", but now such behaviour is becoming both economically and socially desirable. It pays for bloggers to write articles optimised for search engines and crawler bots rather than human readers. Twitter, on the other hand, asks us to reduce our social discourse to 140 characters of hashtags, links, and @ handles, in imitation of the code webpages are written in.

We're at a turning point in the development of the internet. Bots, like any other scientific innovation, can be used for benign or malign purposes.

Must read, and then read the article by Ronson - http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/mar/30/how-bots-are-taking-over-...

I have said for nearly a decade - The more technologically advanced the world becomes, the more human and humane we must become.

I dare you to measure the “value” I add

(When i wrote this, I had no idea just how deeply this would speak to people and how widely it would spread. So, I think a better title is I Dare You to Measure the Value WE Add.)

Tell me how you determine the value I add to my class.

Tell me about the algorithms you applied when you took data from 16 students over a course of nearly five years of teaching and somehow used it to judge me as “below average” and “average”.

Tell me how you can examine my skills and talents and attribute worth to them without knowing me, my class, or my curriculum requirements.

Tell me how and I will tell you:

How all of my students come from different countries, different levels of prior education and literacy, and how there is no “research-based” elementary curriculum created to support schools or teachers to specifically meet their needs.

How the year for which you have data was the year my fifth graders first learned about gangs, the internet, and their sexual identities.

How the year for which you have data was the year that two of my students were so wracked by fear of deportation, depression and sleep deprivation from nightmares, that they could barely sit still and often fought with other students. How they became best of friends by year end. How one of them still visits me every September.

How that year most of my students worked harder than ever, (despite often being referred to as “the low class” or “lower level” within earshot of them), inspiring me and the teachers around us, despite the fact that many of these same students believed they could never go to college because of their immigration status.

How that year many of my students vaulted from a first to third and fourth grade reading levels but still only received a meaningless “1″ on their report cards because such growth is not valued by our current grading system.

How that was the year I quickly gained 6 new students from other countries and had my top 3 transferred out in January to general education classrooms because my school thankfully realized I shouldn’t have 32 students in a multilevel self-contained ESL class.

How the year for which you have data was the year that two of my students, twins who had come from China just the year before to live with parents they hadn’t seen since they were toddlers, finally started to speak in May. And smile. And make friends. How they kept in touch with me via edmodo for two years after leaving my school.

How that year I taught my class rudimentary American Sign Language for our research project; inspired and excited, they mostly taught themselves the Pledge of Allegiance, songs for our school play, John Lennon’s Imagine, and songs for graduation, all in ASL. Then we created an online video-translation dictionary using their first language, English, and ASL. They wrote scripts for skits we videotaped to teach many of these words in context.

**********

This year, my class represents seven countries, two continents, and three languages in one room. Together, they create a tapestry you can neither see, nor feel, nor imagine. I have students who grew up practicing Kung Fu and Tai Chi before school and now always get in trouble in gym for running. I have students in my fifth grade who never went to school before they crossed the US border last year or the year before. I have students who, although in fifth and fourth grade, are capable of doing 7th grade math while others are still learning to add and subtract well. I have a student who just came this year and is already reading on grade level.

I choose to revel in the richness this kind of diversity can bring to my classroom. The challenges, obstacles and pitfalls that teaching a group like this to work together, to learn, to create and grow both tire and thrill me. Not a day goes by that I don’t feel both excited and exhausted at the idea of tomorrow because of all that teaching a class like this entails.

But never will you be able to judge me or my students by one day or one test. Never will I give one iota of care about your tests, no matter how hard I work to help my students to do their best on it, knowing they aren’t meant to pass it because it is written far above their reading levels, and were written with native English speakers in mind. You can’t measure me as a teacher, because you haven’t imagined teachers like me or classes like mine. Their experiences are outside yours.

Tell me how important your data and tests are, and I will tell you how I don’t value your data because it tells me so little about my students yet so much about your educational system.

Your data says one thing: your system is what fails my students.

 

Not only are her kids' "experiences outside those of the test-writer, politicians, etc." her kids' experiences are likely more valuable in the world that is being created by these "value-added" proponents.

THIS FROM SLASHDOT - [ http://news.slashdot.org/story/12/01/14/233203/dhs-monitors-social-media-for-... ]

Recently, TSA's 'Blogger Bob' Burns posted a rant against a cupcake on the TSA blog. Perhaps it made you wonder if TSA and its parent agency, the Department of Homeland Security, really understand what we're saying about them, especially online. Well, thanks to a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit from the Electronic Privacy Information Center, we now know a lot more about how they monitor online comments aside from 'Blogger Bob.' EPIC has received hundreds of pages of documents regarding DHS's online surveillance program. These documents reveal that DHS has contracts with General Dynamics for '24/7 media and social network monitoring.' Perhaps it will warm your heart to know that DHS is particularly interested in tracking media stories that 'reflect adversely' on the U.S. government generally and DHS specifically. The documents include a report summary that might be representative of General Dynamics' work. The example includes summaries of comments on blogs and social networking sites, including quotes. Then again, you might remember J. Edgar Hoover's monitoring of antiwar activists during the Vietnam War, which certainly wasn't for the protesters' benefit.

PLUS THIS FROM ALLGOV.COM - http://www.allgov.com/Top_Stories/ViewNews/Obama_Signs_into_Law_Indefinite_De...

He waited until New Year’s Eve to do it…but he did it. While expressing “serious reservations” about the bill, President Barack Obama on New Year’s Eve signed legislation that cements into law two highly controversial tenets of the war on terror: indefinite detention of terrorism suspects without charge, and the jailing of American citizens without trial. It also takes terrorism-related cases out of the hands of the FBI and the civilian court system and hands them over to the military.

EQUALS SERIOUS QUESTIONS ABOUT THAT CONCEPT OF FREEDOM AMERICANS BELIEVE THEY HAVE.

I just commented on a great post from Chris Lehmann.

That test scores help you get more education, and that more education has an earnings effect — that makes sense to a lot of people,” said Robert H. Meyer

More questionable math ("proofiness") to determine the value of a teacher.

The issue is that we have deluded ourselves into believing that test scores reflect the value of our children, and therefore the opportunities they are allowed to pursue in the years that follow.

We have been deluded by people (economists usually, because they appear to be impartial) who manipulate numbers to tell an incomplete story, or a false story that the populace believes to be true about education in general, and teacher specifically. Why does the general public believe the reports? Because we made everyone believe that math was too hard to understand, and now we are manipulated by numbers and percentages.

High test scores do not equal good education.
Low test scores do not equal good education.
Test scores do not equal good education.

Teachers with experience of more than five years can tell you that, but when 40% - 50% of all new teachers leave within 5 years, room is left for "studies" like this one to gain a foothold.

With all that, I still want my students to do well, and we work to do well, on their tests. Not because that determines their value, but because I want them to have choices in their world. Oddly, I want my students to achieve high test scores as a way of rebelling against our current testing system, so in their future they can change the insanity we are going through today.