Wednesday Open Thread [4.10.13]
It is a very fine Wednesday, and I hope that some of you are out playing in this glorious weather. PLAYING — not shooting pigeons that are being thrown in the way of your gun. The more I think about it, I think that shooting skeet is probably tougher than that, and if you are shooting for fun, work on your skills, people.
It looks like there may be a compromise on the background checks for guns issue in Congress:
Toomey and Manchin were discussing an expansion of current law to require background checks for gun sales over the Internet and between private parties at gun shows, according to the aide, who asked not to be identified in describing the discussions. Noncommercial person-to-person firearms sales wouldn’t be covered, the aide said.
Democrats wanted to require background checks for almost all gun sales, though some supporters said the approach by Toomey and Manchin would be a good compromise.
This covers the larger vectors where criminals can acquire guns. Democrats seem to think that they can get a vote in the Senate, but I think that is still unclear.
A 6-year-old Toms River, N.J., boy who was shot in the head Monday by his 4-year-old neighbor, died Tuesday night, Ocean County authorities said tonight.
I’m sure that the gun’s owner is just another good guy with a gun.
So this is a thing — opting out of the high-stakes standardized tests that are destabilizing teaching and politics. I knew that there were parents working at ending it in some places, but did not know that opting out was it’s own movement. This is from Philly:
Anglin is one of the first, small batch of Philadelphia parents to join a national “opt-out” movement – a grass-roots rebellion against the outsized role that standardized tests like the PSSA (Pennsylvania System of School Assessment) play in the day-to-day classroom experience, in the closure of urban schools rated as “failing,” and in stressing out both students and their teachers, whose careers may soon ride on the results.
I endorse this. Seriously.
What interests you today?
Dave Sokola told the gathering of the Women League of Voters recently that RTTT was basically in place to set up waivers from NCLB.
That is cynical if you think of it as which and who in America is swift enough and organized enough to ask for and receive the waivers. DE certainly was. But is that how we want to leave it? Survival of the swiftest and most connected?
I’ve been following the McConnell tape thing over at TPM, and thought that the getting the FBI involved thing sound overplayed. Now there’s this — the tape brings up questions as to whether campaign work was being done on the taxpayer’s clock.
Here is another story of a parent opting out of the PSSAs.
question I don’t know the answer to: won’t opting out eventually hurt the schools? it’s mentioned in the first article in matters of attendence but if these are the engaged, passionate about education parents it stands to reason their kids probably do well in school (because parental involvement is so important). won’t pulling out these kids hurt the overall scores of the school and thus further hurt their ability to pass the tests?
It might hurt the school, but if school admins are at all honest, at some point they might have to admit that the scores that they have aren’t representative of their actual student body since some statistically significant (someday) group is absent from the test results.
This is a great movement (opting out) for a lot of reasons. Over the past several years I have represented about half a dozen chronically ill children in PA whose health could be compromised by being forced to take the PSSA, and whose placement was not at all at issue no matter what the result. In all of those cases the school, school district, and even the State have refused to let even students on IEPs opt out. They have told children that they will not be promoted to the next grade, will not graduate–you name it.
It has been a horrible all around.
The worst part of all this is that there is very little evidence that high-stakes testing improves either student or teacher performance. There is considerable evidence to the contrary.
What high-stakes testing does primarily is pad the pockets of testing companies, textbook companies, data coaches, and such ….
I hope the parents of the students aren’t losing any sleep over whether this will hurt the schools. The schools put normal education on hold to prepare for and take these tests. The kids aren’t really learning anything during this process and might be better off taking a few day trips to the Please Touch Museum or the Philadelphia Zoo. As far as I can tell, their score has nothing to do with their grades.
And I’m just asking here because I don’t know the answer, but have there been any real ramifications in Delaware for schools that consistently produced poor scores? Superintendents fired? Teachers removed?
Standardized testing is big business – and that’s all it is. The hysteria surrounding test weeks is insane. My daughter says everyone in the school freaks out. I want to join this parent group! Those tests waste valuable educational time.
So if kids skip the test, they can be penalized for it? Even though it it meaningless to grades or SATs?
@cassandra
Absolutely they can be penalized. PA school districts can prevent them from moving to the next grade or graduating.
These opt-outs that you are seeing are coming under the very narrow “religious objection.”
I know of only two cases in which the district and state backed down on a student with health or cognition issues–in both cases they were being sued by a competent attorney and the US DOE and Office of Civil Rights got involved. In both those cases PA DOE fought almost to the bitter end.
In some PA districts, you must pass the 11th grade PSSA or “demonstrate” some level of equal performance (remediation or the like) to graduate (not sure if it is statewide). PA still gives districts and schools a thumbs up or down based on the PSSA performance — which includes test participation. May not hurt the kids, but in the cut-throat world of ed reform, not meeting test attendance goals is one more red checkmark preventing AYP and opening the door to the identification of “failing”. Check it out http://paayp.emetric.net/
sorry for being off topic, but here’s a report from the Swedish discussion on child poverty.
Child poverty – the main issue in next year’s election? http://delawarereferendum.wordpress.com/2013/04/11/child-poverty-the-main-issue-in-next-years-election/