Reply #15: You are right. The testing is written in secrecy. [View All]

[madfloridian]

Scored in secrecy.

Yet people are being formed into groups by corporations, then agitated to work against public schools almost mindlessly.

Students are weighed and found wanting by tests made and scored secretly without regulation.

he media assume that tests are valid and accept the claims made for them. If tests say American schools are lousy (they don't but fear mongers use them that way), then it must be so.

In fact, tests are so much a part of the educational air we breathe, we probably don't think of them as needing regulation. Just like we didn't think about regulating the quality of peanut butter--until recently.

Testing often tries to put on a white hat as part of the educational enterprise, trying to help kids succeed. In reality, the test companies are as full of greed and avarice as the financial sector or any other part of the economy. We don't notice it because...there is no regulation. Test companies make enormous claims for the ways in which their products will help your kid, or your school or your district. Is there any research to back up these claims? No. Are there any sanctions for overstating what the tests can do? No. Companies are totally free to claim whatever they wish.

The relationship between those who make tests and those who use them is way too cozy. In most other industries, such relationships would be banned as sources of conflict of interest.