By DR. LARRY MOSES
No one asked me but.. There is a movement afoot. The grassroots are beginning to grow as students and parents are rebelling together.
An overt challenge to the standardized testing craze instituted by the Bush Administration’s brainchild “No Child Left Behind” is underway. What was designed to measure the results of education in American schools has grown into education itself. It is no longer important how well educated a child is. The important thing has become the test skills of the student.
Why is the Clark County School District so concerned about students taking an exit exam? Is it because those exams reflect what the student knows or is it because if 95 percent of the students do not take the exam, pass or fail, the District will lose federal funding?
Less than half the states require an exit exam and therefore forfeit the federal funding attached to NCLB. The State of Nevada is one of the twenty-four welfare states that takes the money at the expense of their children’s education. It should not surprise us that the only State in the Union that has legalized prostitution would not hesitate to prostitute their children’s education for a few federal dollars.
The State of Nevada condemns hundreds of students each year to welfare rolls so it can keep federal No Child Left Behind funds. Twenty-six states have figured out that those federal dollars cost the State more than they receive from the federal government.
Parents in Washington, Colorado, Texas, Florida, and many other states who are accepting NCLB funds are now refusing to allow their children to take the state mandated standardized exams. On test day, parents are keeping their children home.
It may be time for parents in Nevada to join the rebellion. By eliminating these worthless exams, we will allow teachers to get back to teaching subject matter.
No one asked me but…The latest scandal in the Clark County School District revolves around the possible cheating on standardized student testing at Kelly Elementary School. Seven months ago, State Superintendent Dale Erquiaga stated categorically without a doubt some adult or adults altered the answer sheets to the State’s mandatory tests.
Would someone tell me how Mr. Erquiaga is qualified for the position of State Superintendent of Education? Mr. Erquiaga has worked in Las Vegas for the Howard Hughes Corporation and as the vice president of brand services for R&R Partners. He served as chief deputy secretary of state under then-Secretary of State Dean Heller and was the state director of the Department of
Cultural Affairs under Gov. Kenny Guinn. Before his long time friend, Governor Sandoval appointed him to his present position; Erquiaga had been serving as interim director of the Arizona Humane Society. A graduate of the University of Nevada, Reno,
Erquiaga holds a Master of Science in Leadership from Grand Canyon University. He served on the Clark County School District’s Superintendent’s Education Opportunity Advisory Committee from 2009 to 2010 and was a member of the Year-Round Schools Study Group in Clark County in 2007.
The problem here is that the man running the State Department of Education for the State of Nevada has no experience in investigation or education. In the case of Kelly Elementary, he jumped to a conclusion, that may or may not be right. In doing so he ruined the careers of two young educators.
The District held its own investigation and concluded that there was no conclusive evidence that cheating had occurred. The District also concluded that if, indeed, cheating did occur, it could have happened at a number of different levels, and the odds that it was the Principal or Vice Principal who altered the answers are not good.
The State Superintendent based his accusations on a large number of erasures on the score sheets. Let me give you an alternative to the theory to adult alteration of the score sheets. A technique I taught my students when taking multiple-choice tests could lead to a number of erasures. I told my students to answer all questions as rapidly as possible. If they were not sure as to which answer to choose, they should choose the answer they felt was the most likely correct and mark that question and move on. When they had read and answered every question they should then go back to those they were unsure of and re-read the question. If necessary, they should erase the mark and replace it with their amended answer. This could explain the large number of erasures.
This is just a theory. However, the same should be said for the conclusions drawn by Erquiaga.
The real scandal in this fiasco is not the cheating but the State Superintendent’s willingness to accuse two school administrators without proof. The only thing worse is the Clark County School District’s Superintendent Pat Skorkowsky throwing the Principal and Vice-Principal under the bus on the word of Erquiaga.
Skorkowsky now states, after a seven-month investigation, there is no evidence that any cheating took place. He now believes neither of these administrators was involved in cheating. However, this conclusion is a little late. Both administrators have been removed from their positions, and now live with the stigma of having been punished for cheating.
I remember years ago when the school of one of the county’s best high school principals showed a marked increase in success in exit exams. He was accused of cheating. They did not take into account the aggressive programs he had established to attack failure rate in the school he had just taken over. The powers that be just assumed the large jump in students success had to be due to cheating.
The fact that he had accomplished the very thing they hired him to do never seemed to occur to the mental midgets in the Ed. Center. They re-tested the students and they did better than the first time. The incident sent the message to all building administrators that while the central office expected an improvement in your school’s test scores, you must not improve too much.
Thought of the week… The definition of an extreme authoritarian is one who is willing blindly to assume that government accusations are true without any evidence presented or opportunity to contest those accusations.
– Glenn Greenwald
