If the private company is receiving public money (which they are), then the public has a right to know what’s on those tests, once the tests are given.
If they are judging teachers, schools, and students by these tests, then what the hell good are they if the students and the teachers cannot learn what the students may have gotten wrong in those tests?
It’s all punitive, it’s not educational at all. Use the results to punish the schools, teachers, and students. And, while we’re at it, enrich the testing companies and the rest of the education-industrial complex.
How can you criticize standardized testing if you aren’t allowed to talk about the tests?
To show why these assessments are bad, you have to be able to mention specific questions on the exams.
But if you do that, you will be violating the test company’s copyright and thus be subject to legal action.
So there will be no discussion of your concerns, no defense of the questions in question. Instead you’ll be threatened to silence.
This is the Catch-22 for teachers, parents and children throughout the nation.
We know the federally mandated high stakes assessments public school children must take are poorly constructed, culturally and racially biased, and ultimately unfair. But if we speak up in public with any kind of specificity, we’re threatened with steep fines. And if we write about it on-line, those articles will be taken down, censored or otherwise disappeared.
This is what happened…
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Politicians Are Poody Heads 