RE: Exemptions to STAR and other standardized testing

Nancy Barth says that "Measuring things is fine. Measuring kids is not... Kids learn at different rates. Standardized tests don't take that into consideration."

Objective assessment measures what children KNOW; it does not measure CHILDREN. It is not the role of the assessment to pass judgement WHY some children know less (or more) then others. It may be a different rate of learning, it may be a good/bad curriculum, it may be a good/bad teacher, or few other things. 

Furthermore, I think Nancy confuses "standardized" test with "Norm Referenced Test" (NRT). While NRT is almost always "standardized", other tests, like Criterion-Referenced, or Standard-Referenced can, and mostly are, "standardized" too. The "standardization" refers to the scoring process that is standard and objective rather than being a subjective, scorer-dependent process. In fact STAR has both NRT and Standard-Referenced components, both scored objectively ("in a standardized way"). Clearly, in the Standard-Referenced component of STAR we want -- and can -- eventually to have 100% of children perform at least at an "adequate" level. But I would not sneeze at NRT either - if someone performs significantly below average, s/he clearly will have difficulty in any situation where effective competition takes place - be it a job application or college application, or just a comprehending a college class which is typically geared to an average applicant. 

Unfortunately, if one does sneeze at NRT results, it tends to be at the expense of one's children rather than at one's own expense.