RE: NEW QUESTION(3): Assessment and Accountability

Testing - is needed, is it good?

Testing is useful and even necessary. 

BUT:
What is missing is lucid explanation, not just for the public, but even for the teachers, what is being measured, how and  for what purposes the data will be used.

State-wide testing should be absolute - measuring how many goals, set by the state standards, are reached.  Absolute means that results are not normalized to a group, school or distict. We can have 100% succes for some or even  all.  BUT: Raw  results do not indicate ability, effort or competence of the teacher or the school or the publisher of the textbook.

It is clear that some districts have much more dificult task than others. Yet, current talk  about "testing and accountability", about  'closing underperforming schools',.. is clouding the issue, causing fear and resitance.

Testing must be appropriate. Children entering the school are currently being evaluated by teachers. It is subjective, yet quite sufficient at that level. Allow teacher to enter that assesment into the record, allow teacher to decide when child is ready to profit from the academics. There is no reason why everyone has to start reading at age 6, 7 or even 8. Do not force six year old to take multiple choice tests, and keep telling them "do not let us down"; This is causing harmful stress and parent resistance.

 Do not penalize teachers and schools for accepting dificult or slow children. Children do not have to be tested every year.  At the grades 8 and 12, formal testing is certainly appropriate.

Conclusions from the tests have to be drawn scientificaly to be being statistically significant. (This has specific meaning).

Finally, testing should replace 95% of the 'compliance paperwork': One thing we have demontrated in California, over the last two decades is this: Senators and assemblypersons are not competent to runs the school. Results of the nationwide tests  prove this. So, speaking of the accoutability, please, stop trying. Stop saying, "this time we will do it right!!!  We will have  a plan, with detailed formula which will take into account ADA, ethnicity, cost of living, number of LEPs and NEPS, etc, etc and provide such strong incentive and detailed scripts for teachers, that it will start working".

There is no such formula. State has few controls which are appropriate, such as certification standards for the teachers, educational goals for students,  method of governance (election of school-boards on the state and local level and their powers and duties, if any) and rights and duties of the principals and faculty, spending allocation on salaries vs capital improvement and maintenance... 

 What is above that, attempting to allocate number of PCs per school, number of children per class, this books vs those methods,.. IS HARMFUL. It is harmful when done by the state law, on the state level, by politicians.

  That should be left to professionals. Preferably to local professionals.

 If the current system (using school districts for local governance) is preserved, than teachers, coucil of principals, should have a voice in choosing the board, ar at least be allowed to inform the public how well (or rather how badly) the district, the individual school board members, work to provide services for the classroom....