Yet more wah

Berkeley High Fails! They don't fail the tests, necessarily. They fail at getting their students to take them.

"I would say that the participation rate in the STAR testing was a little under 80 percent," said [Vice Principal Pasquale Scuderi].

Principal Jim Slemp reported that the state of California had previously allowed the adequate participation rate to be measured as 95 percent on the California High School Exit Exam and 85 percent on the STAR tests. However, that policy has changed.

It doesn't look like it would have mattered if the policy was not changed, though, since 80 is less than 85.

"It doesn't look like they are going to allow us to do that this way again," said Slemp. "Our students don't just take a test because somebody says it’s a good idea. They make their own intelligent decisions and I don't think that these tests are an accurate reflection of our school."

Yeah, I mean, come on. Kids doing something they don't want to do in school? Who ever heard of such a thing?

"I really don't like taking the standardized tests," said Delia Keller. "They don't measure how smart you are and they’re really boring to sit through."

Boredom! Run for your lives! There shall be no boredom in school! What a bunch of spoiled brats. School isn't supposed to be fun.

Slemp said, "We are one of the best high schools in the country. It just shows the ridiculousness of this test. Under this standard, we are being categorized as underperforming and that’s just not true."

Scuderi concurred, "The idea of a common benchmark to measure student performance is a good impulse, but it needs considerable revision."

Translation: The test should be designed in a way that'll make us look better.

posted by Beetle Aurora Drake 6/15/2007 10:23:00 AM #
Comments (3)

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Comments:

Do you have some fantastic insight into the value of standardized testing in our society? Do you know something that everyone else doesn't?

Your view that school should be unpleasant and boring really speaks volumes about your character.

# posted by  Anonymous : 11:33 AM, June 15, 2007

 

Your view that my view is that school should be unpleasant and boring really speaks volumes about your reading instruction in school.

School does not have to be uniformly boring and unpleasant. But to assert that school should be completely free of such activities, as suggested by Slemp and Keller, is the position of a spoiled brat. Yes, I think that sometimes you have to do things you don't want to do. I guess that makes me a bad person.

Am I the only one who values standardized tests? "Everyone else doesn't," after all. It seems strange, then, that this method of testing that everyone else doesn't value is used and supported by the state, by many businesses, and by the university system nationwide.

# posted by  Beetle Aurora Drake : 12:25 PM, June 15, 2007

 

Beetle has it right--Slemp and Scuderi are either oblivious or unwilling to admit what lots of folks in Berkeley have known for some time...that the kids who do well on standardized tests (middle and upper-income families from the hills) have largely abandoned the Berkeley public schools in favor of private schooling. Berkeley High now serves mostly lower-class kids from the flatlands, a reality they frequently try to conceal..by sending graduating seniors with poor grades to UC Santa Cruz under their 'Diversity School' program, for example.

# posted by  Anonymous : 10:12 PM, June 21, 2007

 

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