"U.S. Teens Lag as China Soars on International Test"
by John Hechinger
Bloomberg
China’s success in Shanghai results from the government’s abandonment of a system of “key schools” for elites and the institution of “a more inclusive system in which all students are expected to perform at high levels,” the OECD said in the report. China also raised teacher pay and standards and reduced rote learning, while giving... students and local authorities more choice in curriculum.
To Read the Article
Showing posts with label Testing. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Testing. Show all posts
Sunday, December 26, 2010
Thursday, March 04, 2010
Steve Inskeep: Former 'No Child Left Behind' Advocate Turns Critic
Former 'No Child Left Behind' Advocate Turns Critic
by Steve Inskeep
NPR
In 2005, former Assistant Secretary of Education Diane Ravitch wrote, "We should thank President George W. Bush and Congress for passing the No Child Left Behind Act ... All this attention and focus is paying off for younger students, who are reading and solving mathematics problems better than their parents' generation."
Four years later, Ravitch has changed her mind.
"I was known as a conservative advocate of many of these policies," Ravitch says. "But I've looked at the evidence and I've concluded they're wrong. They've put us on the wrong track. I feel passionately about the improvement of public education and I don't think any of this is going to improve public education."
Ravitch has written a book about what she sees as the failure of No Child Left Behind called The Death and Life of the Great American School System. She says one of her biggest concerns is the way the law requires school districts to use standardized testing.
Emphasis On Test Scores Led To Cheating, Dishonesty
"The basic strategy is measuring and punishing," Ravitch says of No Child Left Behind. "And it turns out as a result of putting so much emphasis on the test scores, there's a lot of cheating going on, there's a lot of gaming the system. Instead of raising standards it's actually lowered standards because many states have 'dumbed down' their tests or changed the scoring of their tests to say that more kids are passing than actually are."
Some states contend that 80 to 90 percent of their children are proficient readers and have math proficiency as well, Ravitch notes. But in the same states, only 25 to 30 of the children test at a proficient level on national tests such as the National Assessment of Educational Progress.
"Secretary (of Education Arne) Duncan often says we're lying to our kids," Ravitch says. "And we are lying to our kids."
To Read the Rest of the Episode
by Steve Inskeep
NPR
In 2005, former Assistant Secretary of Education Diane Ravitch wrote, "We should thank President George W. Bush and Congress for passing the No Child Left Behind Act ... All this attention and focus is paying off for younger students, who are reading and solving mathematics problems better than their parents' generation."
Four years later, Ravitch has changed her mind.
"I was known as a conservative advocate of many of these policies," Ravitch says. "But I've looked at the evidence and I've concluded they're wrong. They've put us on the wrong track. I feel passionately about the improvement of public education and I don't think any of this is going to improve public education."
Ravitch has written a book about what she sees as the failure of No Child Left Behind called The Death and Life of the Great American School System. She says one of her biggest concerns is the way the law requires school districts to use standardized testing.
Emphasis On Test Scores Led To Cheating, Dishonesty
"The basic strategy is measuring and punishing," Ravitch says of No Child Left Behind. "And it turns out as a result of putting so much emphasis on the test scores, there's a lot of cheating going on, there's a lot of gaming the system. Instead of raising standards it's actually lowered standards because many states have 'dumbed down' their tests or changed the scoring of their tests to say that more kids are passing than actually are."
Some states contend that 80 to 90 percent of their children are proficient readers and have math proficiency as well, Ravitch notes. But in the same states, only 25 to 30 of the children test at a proficient level on national tests such as the National Assessment of Educational Progress.
"Secretary (of Education Arne) Duncan often says we're lying to our kids," Ravitch says. "And we are lying to our kids."
To Read the Rest of the Episode
Monday, February 22, 2010
Monday, February 08, 2010
Eric Hoover: How The National Merit Scholarship Corporation Tried to Muzzle a Blogger
How a Scholarship Corporation Tried to Muzzle a Blogger
By Eric Hoover
The Chronicle of Higher Education
The National Merit Scholarship Corporation has used legal pressure to stop an independent college counselor from publishing the state-by-state cutoff scores for its prestigious scholarship program.
Nancy Griesemer, the counselor, says she wasn't looking for trouble, just pursuing her favorite hobby with the help of a laptop computer. Ms. Griesemer, 59, works from her home, in Oakton, Va. On weekday mornings she sits down at her dining-room table to write. With Tom, her arthritic tabby cat, perched beside her, she types short entries about college admissions trends, which she posts on her blog, College Explorations, as well as Examiner.com, a vast online hub for bloggers.
All told, Ms. Griesemer gets between 150 and 250 page views per day, not bad for someone who doesn't write about politics or sex. It's a safe bet that most of her readers are local high-school students and their parents.
Recently, someone else started reading her blog. That someone works for the National Merit Scholarship Corporation, which conducts the annual competition for its high-profile National Merit Scholarships. Based in Evanston, Ill., the privately financed nonprofit organization is a powerful—and controversial—player in the realm of selective admissions. Ms. Griesemer characterizes the group this way: "It appears that they go after people who are critical of them."
An Unexpected Call
In late January, Ms. Griesemer received a telephone call from Eileen Artemakis, the corporation's director of public information. Ms. Artemakis asked Ms. Griesemer for the name of her lawyer. The counselor was stunned. "What's the problem?" she asked.
The answer: the blog entry Ms. Griesemer had published on January 26. In that post, she described how the National Merit Scholarship program works. The corporation uses just one measure, PSAT scores, as the "initial screen" to determine which students are eligible for the scholarships. The corporation uses a specific methodology to ensure an equitable geographic distribution of the awards, which means that the cutoff scores vary from state to state.
In her post, Ms. Griesemer explained that a student in Massachusetts needs a higher PSAT score than a student from Wyoming does. "Unfair?" she wrote. "Maybe."
Ms. Griesemer also listed the 2010 minimum qualifying scores for each state, which range from 201 to 221 (on the PSAT's scale of 60 to 240), according to information she compiled. The National Merit Scholarship Corporation does not release those data to the public, though it does publish the information in its "Guide to the National Merit Scholarship Program," mailed each summer to high schools throughout the nation. Test takers are informed only of the qualifying score in their own states. "Surely," Ms. Griesemer writes of the variances among state qualifying scores, "there must be a better way."
Ms. Griesemer, who says she has never seen the guide, obtained her information from other Web sites, including College Planning Simplified. It was the first site that came up in a Google search, says Ms. Griesemer, who later double-checked the numbers on the Web site College Confidential's discussion board, where various commenters had posted the minimum scores in their respective states.
'Misleading to the Public'
In other words, the cutoff scores are hardly a secret. Still, Ms. Griesemer says Ms. Artemakis told her that she had published proprietary data. Although Ms. Artemakis did not ask Ms. Griesemer to remove the information, she told the consultant that she would soon hear from the corporation's lawyer.
Last Thursday, Ms. Griesemer received a letter from J. Kevin Fee, a lawyer in the Washington, D.C., office of Morgan Lewis. Mr. Fee wrote that Ms. Griesemer had used proprietary data from the corporation's "copyrightable materials," referring to the guide it sends to high schools. He also wrote that her posts contained incorrect information: "Using inaccurate ... information out of context is misleading to the public and highly damaging to NMSC."
To Read the Rest of the Article
By Eric Hoover
The Chronicle of Higher Education
The National Merit Scholarship Corporation has used legal pressure to stop an independent college counselor from publishing the state-by-state cutoff scores for its prestigious scholarship program.
Nancy Griesemer, the counselor, says she wasn't looking for trouble, just pursuing her favorite hobby with the help of a laptop computer. Ms. Griesemer, 59, works from her home, in Oakton, Va. On weekday mornings she sits down at her dining-room table to write. With Tom, her arthritic tabby cat, perched beside her, she types short entries about college admissions trends, which she posts on her blog, College Explorations, as well as Examiner.com, a vast online hub for bloggers.
All told, Ms. Griesemer gets between 150 and 250 page views per day, not bad for someone who doesn't write about politics or sex. It's a safe bet that most of her readers are local high-school students and their parents.
Recently, someone else started reading her blog. That someone works for the National Merit Scholarship Corporation, which conducts the annual competition for its high-profile National Merit Scholarships. Based in Evanston, Ill., the privately financed nonprofit organization is a powerful—and controversial—player in the realm of selective admissions. Ms. Griesemer characterizes the group this way: "It appears that they go after people who are critical of them."
An Unexpected Call
In late January, Ms. Griesemer received a telephone call from Eileen Artemakis, the corporation's director of public information. Ms. Artemakis asked Ms. Griesemer for the name of her lawyer. The counselor was stunned. "What's the problem?" she asked.
The answer: the blog entry Ms. Griesemer had published on January 26. In that post, she described how the National Merit Scholarship program works. The corporation uses just one measure, PSAT scores, as the "initial screen" to determine which students are eligible for the scholarships. The corporation uses a specific methodology to ensure an equitable geographic distribution of the awards, which means that the cutoff scores vary from state to state.
In her post, Ms. Griesemer explained that a student in Massachusetts needs a higher PSAT score than a student from Wyoming does. "Unfair?" she wrote. "Maybe."
Ms. Griesemer also listed the 2010 minimum qualifying scores for each state, which range from 201 to 221 (on the PSAT's scale of 60 to 240), according to information she compiled. The National Merit Scholarship Corporation does not release those data to the public, though it does publish the information in its "Guide to the National Merit Scholarship Program," mailed each summer to high schools throughout the nation. Test takers are informed only of the qualifying score in their own states. "Surely," Ms. Griesemer writes of the variances among state qualifying scores, "there must be a better way."
Ms. Griesemer, who says she has never seen the guide, obtained her information from other Web sites, including College Planning Simplified. It was the first site that came up in a Google search, says Ms. Griesemer, who later double-checked the numbers on the Web site College Confidential's discussion board, where various commenters had posted the minimum scores in their respective states.
'Misleading to the Public'
In other words, the cutoff scores are hardly a secret. Still, Ms. Griesemer says Ms. Artemakis told her that she had published proprietary data. Although Ms. Artemakis did not ask Ms. Griesemer to remove the information, she told the consultant that she would soon hear from the corporation's lawyer.
Last Thursday, Ms. Griesemer received a letter from J. Kevin Fee, a lawyer in the Washington, D.C., office of Morgan Lewis. Mr. Fee wrote that Ms. Griesemer had used proprietary data from the corporation's "copyrightable materials," referring to the guide it sends to high schools. He also wrote that her posts contained incorrect information: "Using inaccurate ... information out of context is misleading to the public and highly damaging to NMSC."
To Read the Rest of the Article
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