Locally (for some of us now): Back to school + WASL = anxiety test

Yes there is a quite a bit of whining in this article:

I don't even want to start the school year," said Brown, 29, who saw the number of students in his Federal Way district classroom spike from 17 to 28 last year. "We're already getting e-mails about how test scores have got to come up."

But some good points as well:

Some educators are dismissive of the new mandates, convinced the rules will change even further in the future. In Bellevue, Superintendent Mike Riley said he would rather focus on preparing all students for college than on preparing them for the state's test. If Bellevue can prepare kids for college, he said, high test scores will follow soon enough.

"I'm not going to give anyone an ulcer over this," said Riley.

Made some aesthetic changes yesterday. Travis, Ben, Eric, David, and Dan post as soon as you can.

I wish I would of wrote this:

We're not usually fond of mission statements, especially for groups like schools where the mission should be painfully obvious without all the hype. Mission statements in the wonderland of modern education tend to focus on blather such as "all children will become life-long learners" and at least one gratuitous reference to "Diversity."

Via: ReformK12.com

Locally: New state standards

When the testing culture is criticized, proponents say that critics don't support high standards/achievement. That's a BS argument and most realize it.

Here is why the fed's should leave the states alone and the states should give more power to local districts.

The rule changes announced yesterday also will help the 436 schools and 125 school districts that did not make "adequate yearly progress," or AYP, last year. If they didn't make the goals again this year, they would have been flagged as needing improvement and been required to change. All but five Puget Sound school districts failed to meet progress targets last year.

"It buys us some time to get some strong systemic changes in our schools and districts," Mary Alice Heuschel, deputy superintendent with the Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction (OSPI) said yesterday.

But it will be difficult to determine how much of a school's improvement might be due to its own effort or to the policy changes.

Lies, damn lies, and statistics.

I did some browsing of the "blogoshphere" today and I like this one:

http://www.reformk12.com/ Pragmatic and to the point.

This makes a great soundbite:

“As far as making it a graduation requirement,” she (Judith Billings) says of the WASL, “I think right now that’s a mistake.”

Billings has other parts to her platform, but the idea of dropping the WASL as a graduation requirement is her bombshell. It would derail, or at least seriously alter, the push toward state standards that has been the centerpiece of education policy here since 1993, when the state Legislature passed a landmark education reform bill. The notion raises the possibility that education reform could go the way of health care reform in this state—a historic initiative abandoned before it was ever implemented.

Part of me wonders if she is running just to piss off her old rival Bergeson?

Light(er) blogging the next few days. Here are some quotes to ponder -

Any fool can make a rule, and any fool will mind it. Thoreau

Some circumstantial evidence is very strong, as when you find a trout in the milk. Thoreau

I hate quotations. Tell me what you know. Emerson