<p>One effect of widespread suburbanization in the United States during the 1920s was</p>
<p>A. airlines adding routes to new cities.
B. increased reliance upon the automobile.
C. decreased immigration from Europe and Asia.
D. television replacing radio as the most popular medium.</p>
<p>You lost me BC.</p>
<p>That was one of the questions on the examination.</p>
<p>Cartera–yes, absolutely. Billions are being made on the new regime.</p>
<p>I’m a teacher. Elementary. I teach art. You caught me on a bad day so I might feel differently tomorrow but I will say that many, many of the best teachers, including me (so I’ve been told) are frustrated beyond belief in the way that education is heading,</p>
<p>It isn’t just the standardized testing in and of itself. It’s the fact that administrators and teachers are being judged based on the scores of these tests. The competition to have the best scores and the fear of repercussion if you don’t is having a very negative effect on the learning environment. I know a teacher who teachers grade 4 ELA and was trying to integrate lessons with a math teacher. She used a different word in her lesson to define a concept and the other teacher came in and screamed at her that she was confusing the students and the sky was falling. This happened about a week before the standardized test. The screaming teacher is first year and concerned that her contract will not be renewed if her students don’t “perform”. It’s downright crazy. Where are the kid’s interests in all of this maniacal scrambling for artificial confirmation of low order thinking?</p>
<p>Let’s cut to the chase - the problem with education is that it’s too labor intensive to be profitable. Standardardized testing means standardized instruction. I have no doubt my grandchildren will get most of their instruction from a glowing screen of some kind, in a building full of kids in front of screens (because we’ll still need the baby-sitting function - parents have to work), with maybe a few live bodies to keep order and serve lunch. And that may well be better than what some kids are getting now, but the point is, it will enable the Corporations who are moving in to make their money. Thinking? We’ll have AI for that…</p>
<p>As Charly predicted for the future of education, a TV in every room.</p>
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<p>I’d hope that we’d be the ones teaching our grandkids if our kids didn’t have the time to do it themselves.</p>
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<p>Only the non-standardized stuff…otherwise I’d risk losing my pension.</p>
<p>It’s just Simon Sez masquerading as education.</p>
<p>And if teachers believe they are hurting children, they should leave. There is no excuse to harm children.</p>
<p>I agree that teaching to a standardized test based on rote memorization is a poor way of serving students’ educational needs. I don’t agree that that is what has to happen in a well-run school district. </p>
<p>For a student in a decent school, these tests are absurdly easy. Teachers can keep doing whatever they’ve been doing, because the schools will get a near 100 % passing rate.</p>
<p>If a school consistently has a lot of students failing what is essentially a basic skills test, then something in that educational system is not working. In a lot of cases, this won’t be entirely the school’s fault, as family and environment plays a huge role as well, but if a kid in 9th grade can’t pass the social studies test noimagination posted, the school has to take some of the blame, and has to make changes accordingly. Teaching to the test isn’t a problem if the skills being taught are skills the students actually need to know.</p>
<p>I do feel sorry for individual teachers who are stuck compensating for years of poor education. A high school English teacher should be able to assume that students know basic grammar and move on to more inspiring subjects. If it turns out the students can’t identify a sentence fragment and he has to devote class time to a remedial grammar workshop instead of a discussion of a novel, that’s a shame, and students are losing out. In the case of the test sample posted, many of those questions are essentially testing reading comprehension, something that a 9th grade social studies teacher shouldn’t really have to be worried about. But the fault isn’t the test, the fault is the system that means a kid can get to high school - and often college - without knowing these basic skills. </p>
<p>I also don’t like the idea that an emphasis on basic facts and innovative learning are mutually exclusive. It is a lot more fun to have the class do a mock debate between loyalists and Patriots than to memorize a group of facts about the American Revolution. But in the process of preparing for that debate, students are also going to have to learn what the Stamp Act was and that George III was the king of England and what “no taxation without representation” means. And I suspect that a state standardized test on American history isn’t going to dig a lot deeper than that.</p>
<p>I have a problem with math tests that don’t just require the correct answer, you have to explain how you got it.</p>
<p>When my D took first took the WASL she failed because some math she does in her head,& she couldnt write an essay explaining how she did it.</p>
<p>I had the same thing happen to me a couple years ago, when I took a math placement test. I hadnt studied for it in any way & hadnt taken a math course for decades, but I placed into the class. I couldn’t have explained why I worked the problems the way I did however & if I was taking that test as part of my high school graduation requirements, that inability to do so would have kept me from graduating.</p>
<p>“because the jolly green giant told me so.”</p>
<p>John Holt once noted how simple math problems that could be figured out by first graders were largely impossible to them once they had become fifth graders. That’s because they are often taught methods that have nothing do with the way math is used in the real world. For example, we teach kids to add from right to left. But if one goes to the store with $2.50 in one’s pocket, for beans costing 89 cents, and spaghetti costing $1.39, NO ONE adds the nines first. That’s an “alternative” method, not a particularly useful one in dealing with the real world.</p>
<p>The same is try of writing. If it isn’t communicating with some one, it isn’t writing - it is something else, but it isn’t writing. It is “not-writing”. Instant messaging is writing, e-mails are writing, thank you notes are writing, but essays written for the circular filebox are “not-writing”. And, in “not-writing”, one form of spelling, grammar, punctuation, etc. are as good as any other. And the kids know it. </p>
<p>Much of science education is the same. Mostly canned experiments with canned answers and canned explanations. They are very good at teaching this in the so-called “good” schools. </p>
<p>It’s one giant game of Simon Sez where everyone learns their place, sooner or later.</p>
<p>mini,
It isn’t the teachers who are hurting the students, it is the climate and the frenzied concern on the part of administrators that THEIR school won’t measure up.</p>
<p>And these tests are NOT easy. Not where I live. They are difficult and they are often developmentally inappropriate and arbitrary in content. So teachers teach to a random collection of content that is decided on by someone with, what appears to be, a limited understanding of child development and cognitive function.</p>
<p>In the meantime, everyone keeps talking about 21st century skills and creativity being the pinnacle of these, while, with the other hand they are cutting art and music programs. </p>
<p>It feels, on the inside, like a collective mental breakdown. </p>
<p>Again, I’m having a rough week. Maybe everything will seem groovy by Monday :)</p>
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<p>There were some good curricular materials in the late 1980s that taught multiple methods for arithmetic and gave real-life methods as well as somewhat more theoretical methods.</p>
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<p>There are a number of real worlds where math is concerned. Some of those worlds are interesting to explore.</p>
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<p>Well, you could add the nines first - a kid with good mental dexterity could do that.</p>
<p>I think that multiple methods should be taught for simple arithmetic along with a relatively early introduction to the commutative, associative and distributive laws. In this particular case, one efficient approach would be to round up and add and then subtract the roundup amount if necessary. One could teach about upper bounds and lower bounds too.</p>
<p>“Well, you could add the nines first - a kid with good mental dexterity could do that.”</p>
<p>You COULD do that, but I haven’t met anyone in the real world who does. (Big country - I’m sure there is someone.) So what we “teach” is mystification. </p>
<p>“There were some good curricular materials in the late 1980s that taught multiple methods for arithmetic and gave real-life methods as well as somewhat more theoretical methods.”</p>
<p>Yup, and we know where they went. Teachers are still taught them in teacher prep. courses. But they don’t use them. Virtually every teacher has read the book “Reading without Nonsense” as well <a href=“http://www.amazon.com/Reading-Without-Nonsense-Frank-Smith/dp/080774686X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1367593468&sr=8-1&keywords=reading+without+nonsense[/url]”>http://www.amazon.com/Reading-Without-Nonsense-Frank-Smith/dp/080774686X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1367593468&sr=8-1&keywords=reading+without+nonsense</a>. But it all goes out the window in bringing home a paycheck.</p>
<p>“It isn’t the teachers who are hurting the students, it is the climate and the frenzied concern on the part of administrators that THEIR school won’t measure up.”</p>
<p>No. I believe teachers are smart. Many of them know what they are doing. They know that what they are doing hurts children. They’ve been doing it for a decade. The only reason it is even an issue now is that instead of the tests being solely used to hurt children, they are now being used to evaluate teachers as well.</p>
<p>Now, mind you, I think schools are a tremendous success story. Their job is to “prepare children for the challenges of the 21st Century”. We know what 21st Century America needs.</p>
<p>Walmart clerks.</p>
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<p>The 'kid’s interest" is supposedly represented by the assessment tool(s), which, according to your state educ leaders, assesses what the state ed leaders believe kids should be learning at that grade.</p>
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<p>This is why I gave up on curricular materials after the early 1990s.</p>
<p>BTW, the students aren’t necessarily motivated to do well on the tests. To them it’s just a week or two of busy work that they won’t get measured on. The measurement is really for the teachers and the school. I’ve heard that reason given as to why schools don’t perform well.</p>
<p>Our local school district offered to administer the state assessments to our kids. I was curious so I said how long would it take. They came back with two weeks. I didn’t need two weeks of testing to figure out where my kids where so I declined.</p>
<p>In our district, assessment tools apparently arent aligned with standards, which is why the protests. It doesnt influence class standing or grades. It is mainly used to evaluate teachers.
It takes a lot of class time however as it may be given three times a year.
This doesnt mean three DAYS, more like three x weeks.</p>
<p>I am proud of the teachers who stand up for the kids in Seattle. Jesse Hagopian could had an easier life,with parents who are profs, & a degree from a LAC, he could have moved into the “reform education” movement or something else more profitable after his time in Washington DC public schools with TFA. He wasn’t teaching at Garfield when D was there, but his commitment to the kids & to their education is typical.
[Op-ed:</a> Why Garfield teachers boycotted the MAP test | Opinion | The Seattle Times](<a href=“http://seattletimes.com/html/opinion/2020158085_jessehagopianopedxml.html]Op-ed:”>http://seattletimes.com/html/opinion/2020158085_jessehagopianopedxml.html)</p>
<p>The test I took for placement at my college, that I passed without knowing what I was doing, was to show that I had the equivalency of a college algebra course.
( It was a while ago, but I think it was to register for a soils class- I got an A in the class but it was much more difficult than I anticipated- interesting though)</p>
<p>Im not against all testing, but if the curriculum is good, if teachers are allowed to adjust curriculum to the needs of the students, & if they have a reasonable class size, shouldn’t the teacher be able to determine where students are at?</p>
<p>When I was in school, I dont remember much testing. An aptitude test when I was in high school - I remember block patterns & questions involving spatial ability, but thats all. Why do we have so many tests now?
Because Bill Gates thinks we should?
His kids arent taking the tests.</p>
<p>One of our local schools fell under the dreaded NCLB AYP failure and they were notified near the beginning of the school year. So they immediately had to have two weeks of testing done - so they blow two weeks of instructional time out of their school year to figure out what they need to do. Seems more like punishment than an attempt at progress.</p>
<p>If they really believed testing was a reasonable assessment of what kids are learning, the tests should be given unannounced, with no “prep” time at all.</p>
<p>“Because Bill Gates thinks we should?
His kids arent taking the tests.”</p>
<p>A college dropout who thinks he knows something about how children learn.</p>