Sats boycott hits hundreds of schools

[Trillo]

Source: BBC

Hundreds of schools in England are staging a boycott of one of the cornerstones of primary education, the national schools tests, known as Sats.
...
Among the schools of which the BBC has details, nearly 1,900 (15%) say they will boycott the tests and about 5,650 say they will not (45%).

The councils say they do not know the situation in the remaining 40% of schools.
...
The head teachers say that the tests damage children's education because they encourage teachers to "teach to the test", so that other subjects are squeezed out of the curriculum.

Read more: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/education/10103165.stm

---

Wonder when this is coming across the Atlantic.

[msongs]

1. sing along now, "we don't need no edu-kay-shun...." nt

[DeSwiss]

8. "we don't need no thought control...."

[villager]

2. a standardized test boycott here is vastly overdue...

n/t

[anigbrowl]

3. probably not at all

The uk educational system has a lot of the same problems we do - a lack of academic focus leading to poor performance. Other euro countries have a stronger role for testing and it largely works for them. They, and we, need more testing rather than less.

[Rosa Luxemburg]

5. nonsense, we don't need more testing!!!!

[47of74]

7. All this excessive testing is destroying our educational system

[Rosa Luxemburg]

9. exactly

we need children to think critically, apply knowledge to real world situations and have fun learning. I hate teaching to the test.

[anigbrowl]

14. and how do you propose to measure this?

It's entirely possible to do both. Yet college undergraduates continue to need remedial math and English teaching and American high school students keep slipping dowm international league tables.

[w4rma]

12. No. Standardized testing doesn't work. (nt)

[Doremus]

15. At one time US schools were the best in the world.

And yet standardized testing wasn't a gleam in even a single politician's eye.

Horrors!! No standardized tests! Oh Noes!!!11


Did it ever occur to you that the nation's schools might be turning to shit BECAUSE of the excessive standardized testing and resultant teaching to the test and all that entails?

Or were you content to swallow the repukes' meme about "accountability," i.e., "kill public schools so we can pocket the money instead"?

[defendandprotect]

19. Agree with you . . .

[Rosa Luxemburg]

4. We should have done this when Bush imposed 'the tests'

[truthisfreedom]

6. Every single thing that guy did was wrong-headed.

Cripes. What a loser.

[Rosa Luxemburg]

10. yes they got it the wrong way around

punishing schools in poor neighborhoods was unbelievable.

[boppers]

11. Teach WHAT to the tests?

I recall taking lots of standardized tests, but it was never in anything obscure or bizarre, it was always basic things like math, reading comprehension, spelling, vocabulary, logic, etc...

Is the current testing regime vastly different? Or have attitudes changed about whether or not students should learn math (or other topics, I really don't know, so I'm just guessing).

[LeftyMom]

13. The problem is, everything not on the test gets ignored. Well, that's the first of many problems.

A lot of schools neglect science, cut art and music entirely, ignore foreign languages, reduce or eliminate recess, etc because all time is supposed to focus on teaching what's on the test. Well, that and a lot of classroom time gets wasted on teaching strategies for standardized testing, rather than on real content.

Additionally, the standards are designed to make schools fail. Let's say you've got a very good school and your kids' average score is crazy high. But there was an intestinal virus going around that week and a lot of the kids were in no condition to come to class. Congrats! You're now a failing school. Since the percentage of kids who took the test was too low, you fail no matter how the kids who did take it scored.

You can also fail if any one sub-group of kids fail. So let's say your school community includes a very small group of Hmong families recently emigrated from refugee camps in Thailand. The kids are still learning English, but are tested only in English, they had little prior education in their native language to build upon, and unsurprisingly they don't score very well. Yours is now a failing school, even if these kids are progressing rapidly, and even if every last kid in every other subgroup gets a perfect score on every test. Oh, and special ed kids are a subgroup. Good luck administering a standardized test at grade level to severely autistic teenager who has never spoken a word and still shits his pants.

So issues with whether testing is a good idea and what to test for aside, the current rules are designed to make schools fail.

[Doremus]

16. Word + 1000

They want failure, actively encourage it and build it into the system.

[Zorra]

17. Tests are just so totally unfair to people that can't read. n/t

[Doremus]

21. Schools aren't dying fast enough ---- quick! More tests!!!!1

Bah.

[defendandprotect]

18. IQ tests in general are simply BS -- and the SATs even more so --

[Dogmudgeon]

20. SAT = "Silly-Assed Test"

Or, in the Commonwealth, "Silly-Arsed Test".

--d!