RE: Exemptions to STAR and other standardized testing

Being in the classroom everyday with middle school students, I have a distinctly different point of view on SAT 9 or it's new morph CAT.  These tests are a joke.  I've had brilliant students score in the bottom quartile and marginal students score in the 90's.

What should that tell you?  That the brilliant kid can't or wont focus for two weeks of testing and the marginal kid has the ability to guess well.

Please keep in mind that the SAT 9 only aligns to about 80% of the California State Content Standards for Language Arts and Math.  Anytime you have a test administered nationwide, it will not totally match with our states standards.  

Since classroom instruction is content standard driven, if a teacher teaches everything he/she can only expect their students to score 80% of the answers correctly.

Ah, but Mr. Wurman would probably say "NRT means that those statistical anomolies would be ironed out."

Norm Referenced Testing does not measure what a student has learned, or a teacher taught, or the socieo-economic level of a family.  It shows which students are at the top and which at the bottom.  Beleive it or not, there are an equal number of each.  For every child who scores a 99, there is another who scored a 1.

If I graded like that in my classroom I'd be hauled into the principal's office to explain why 1/2 of my class failed to score 50%.

Dump this horrible test.  Go to straight Performance Assignements where students write in essay form about a pre-arranged standardized topic.  Keep the high school exit exams.  It measures in a concrete way exactly what a student needs to know to graduate high school.  Explore offering different levels of culmination.

There is a fundemental flaw in this state's thinking.  Not all of them are going to college.  Over half of this years high school graduates will find their way into the workforce or armed services.  

Instead of focusing on one multiple choice test to determine how a school/teacher/student are doing, use essays to peer into their souls.  Use exit exams at every grade level to check for competency in required skills.  Use diverse methods for assessment remembering that California's economy is diverse, it needs a diverse workforce.

Standardized NRTesting is cookie-cutter education.  Education should be tailored to the needs of the child.  Stanford 9 does not do that.  CAT will not do that.