Quotables

She and Helms get badge of honor

Ann Coulter on the late (what took so long?) Jesse Helms:

Helms was for integration; he was simply against "movements." To paraphrase Dan Quayle, to be called a racist by these people is a badge of honor.

Lewis Cohen, Director of the Coalition of Essential Schools on testing:

Policymakers are increasingly acknowledging the disconnect between what is being required to be successful on standardized tests and the skills our children will need to face an increasingly complex future. Last month Democratic Presidential nominee Barack Obama participated as an evaluator in a performance assessment at a new small high school in Mapleton Colorado. Afterwards he spoke about the need for more appropriate assessments.

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New Orleans charter school teachers get shaft on retirement benefits

Though charter school teachers remain eligible for the basic retirement benefits offered through the state retirement system for public school teachers, they generally are not eligible for ancillary retirement benefits, such as medical and life insurance, provided by the Orleans Parish school system.

Questioning retention in Florida

A Florida state law mandating that 3rd graders be held back a year based on low FCAT scores, has had a serious damaging effect on students.

”'The research stretching over a 60-plus-year period has consistently demonstrated the same thing: that retention in grade does not improve performance in subsequent years' achievement and bears a strong relationship to dropping out of school later…`No other body or research is so strongly one-sided, yet policy makers and politicians point to it as a way to improve performance.''

The D.C. test score bump

There may be a new sheriff in town., but in D.C. schools,testing madness continues as usual. The media’s all abuzz about this year’s increases on standardized test scores, and the bureaucrats are already elbowing their way up to the media trough to take credit for the bump.

New supe, Michelle Rhee, knowing full well that such a short time in office couldn’t have produced huge test score jumps, still claims it was her privatization efforts combined with teacher and staff firings that deserve all the credit. "I wasn't expecting to see such large gains early on," Rhee said.

Others, more accurately attribute the score increases to students getting used to the new DC-CAS exam, introduced by Rhee’s predecessor Clifford Janey. Still others say that schools’ preoccupation with test-prep led to the increases.

Either explanation, of course, begs the real teaching/learning questions in the District.

Side note: Deputy Mayor for Education Victor Reinoso said students in the traditional system made strong gains and were outperforming their peers in public charter schools.

Guru still “annoyed”

Says StarTribune.com:

Testing “ guru” Dave Heistadhad, “waited anxiously for months to proclaim that the district had made strides on this year's state reading and math tests… And, he really wanted to say that annoying achievement gap between black and white students had narrowed. No such luck…. Instead, a familiar pattern held true. Schools with high percentages of students of color and low-income families didn't do well.”