Great feed aggregator

Published by in blogs, literacy on March 11th, 2006

David Warlick has setup a great feed aggregator for both the CUE and MACUL conferences that took place last week. Functioning as a “feed river,” this page brings together different blog posts relating to these conference events and presentations there. David also included a column of posts that include links to his blog. Overall this is a nice portal of current blog content focusing on educational issues.

One of the posts I found using David’s page is Angela Stephens’ post from Thursday, “TAKS: Is it Helping or Hindering Our Students?” I particularly related to this statement:

I just don’t get it. Yes, I want our students to graduate knowing how to read and write, how to balance a check book, calculate a tip, understand how history affects current society, and understand basic science. I would also like our students to be able to think critically, question and think for themselves so they do not follow blindly, work effectively in collaborative groups, listen critically, articulate their thoughts well in front of an audience and be able to manage information and validate sources. The TAKS test ensures none of this.

This reinforces a desire I have had for some time (while it may be somewhat masochistic) to take all the EXIT level TAKS tests required for Texas high school graduation. (There are 4 of them.) I agree with Angela, lots of adults talk about these tests very stridently, but how many of those adults have actually TAKEN the exams themselves so they have a personal, intimate understanding of exactly what is on the tests and required to pass them? My guess is, not many.

On this day..

2 Comments »
  • http://www.learningismessy.com/blog Brian Crosby

    I’ve thought for years that CEO’s, legistlators, governors, etc. should be required to take the sixth grade reading and math exam. To make it safer for them we could publish the average score and individual scores without names (but mail them their own score). Maybe we should start a grass roots campaign! : )

  • http://improveschoolsnow.blogspot.com Stephanie Sandifer

    I work on a high school campus and I agree that it would be wonderful if parents, business leaders, and government policy makers would take these tests before they spend one more minute promoting standardized testing as “accountability for results”.

    I have continued to push my teachers to teach at a higher level — to incorporate literacy strategies across the curriculum and to use engaging activities that promote critical and creative thinking and collaboration within a real-world context. But because of our high-stakes testing environment I too often see more lecturing (about what kids are going to need to know because “it’s going to be on the TAKS”) and more worksheets the are designed to mirror the structure of the test questions.

    The TAKS is supposed to be higher-level than the TAAS was… but it really isn’t. If people would really look at the test they would understand this. In fact, it’s really a basic knowledge and skills test — but we have the teachers and the students so freaked out about it that the kids end up too stressed out to perform well on it.

    And — I can promise one thing for certain based on my knowledge about what is on these tests. If our business leaders and policy makers — who are promoting high-stakes testing as a way to make our work-force more competitive globally (and to produce graduates who have the skills desired by employers) — if those people would take a look at these tests they would see that the tests do not measure everything that our students need to know and be able to do in our global information-based economy.

    The big problem is that the “TEST” is the only thing that teachers have time to teach — and it’s the only thing that administrators are looking for when they go into classrooms (because their heads are on the chopping block if the scores don’t go up.)

    So when will the students learn all of the other stuff?

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