While this year’s student proficiency scores showed overall improvement statewide, local superintendents say that recent changes in testing design and implementation mean those results don’t reflect student performance accurately.
Tag: testing
Congressman Lee Zeldin is holding a press conference this afternoon to discuss legislation he’s co-sponsoring aimed at rolling back federally-mandated testing.
When you raise the issue of why and how too much testing may be a problem — particularly if there is an argument about using such tests to measure teacher effectiveness — some people ask, “What’s the problem? Life is full of tests.”
JENNIFER GUSTAVSON FILE PHOTO | Southold school board president Paulette Ofrias, left, and Superintendent David Gamberg are expected to discuss Common Core Wednesday night.
Southold School District Superintendent David Gamberg and school board members are expected to address concerns Wednesday about standardized testing and how Common Core curriculum is being implemented inside the classroom.
The meeting comes two weeks after the school board’s regular October meeting when a group of parents protested the state’s new education mandates.
The Common Core State Standards Initiative primarily requires instructors to teach more non-fiction and more rigorous math to students at a younger age, and is a set of national standards designed to raise the bar for classroom instruction. It’s also designed to help prepare students for college and careers upon graduating high school.
After New York adopted Common Core, the state published lesson plans for teachers to help students achieve the new standards. The state doesn’t mandate schools to use these specific lesson plans, but they are available online at engageny.org.
In addition to Common Core talks, school officials are expected to discuss the “opting out” movement against the state’s standardized testing.
The meeting is at 7:30 p.m. in the high school auditorium.
Check back for coverage from tonight’s meeting.
While testing of students is mandated, and will continue to be for the foreseeable future, one local school superintendent maintains that high scores on those tests aren’t necessarily a sign that real learning is taking place in the classroom.
Southold Superintendent David Gamberg so strongly believes that test scores don’t render a full picture of student achievement that he opted out of the competition for federal Race to the Top funds, which would have netted his district only about $14,000 over a four-year period, he told Board of Education members at their work session Oct. 13.
To chase that bit of money by enhancing the focus on test results would have compromised the pursuit of excellence in education, he said.
During the work session, Mr. Gamberg showed a brief trailer from a YouTube video, “The Race to Nowhere,” demonstrating the increased pressure on students to perform well on tests.
He also pointed to a book by former assistant secretary of education Diane Ravitch, “The Death and Life of the Great American School System: How Testing and Choice Are Undermining Education.” Ms. Ravitch maintains that testing is narrowing the curriculum and resulting in more cheating and “gaming” of the system, Mr. Gamberg said. It also erodes local control of public education, he added.
“The primary challenge is to see if we have taught our children to use their minds well,” Mr. Gamberg said. That means making students critical thinkers, adept users of technology and informed consumers with a sense of responsibility to their families and community, he said.
Board member Judi Fouchet said students need to be encouraged to accept mistakes and use them as a learning tool.
To improve the educational experience for Southold students, board members and Mr. Gamberg want to survey graduates to find out how well prepared they were for the world they faced upon graduation. A concerted effort to get e-mail addresses from alumni and graduating seniors will be undertaken, he said.
The superintendent wants to identify gaps in achievement and address ways to improve the educational experience while controlling spending, he said.
Mr. Gamberg proposed establishing voluntary panels of teachers to assess students beyond what test data reveals. He has previously suggested that students collect portfolios that represent what they have learned from the time they enter school to the time they leave the district.
Ms. Fouchet said she was suspicious of an increased emphasis on substituting charter schools for under-performing public schools. She said she suspected the policy results from legislators who may have made investments in privatizing education, she said. Instead of improving the public school, it’s a way of taking the public education system down, she said.
Mr. Gamberg said global competition is real, and related an African proverb about how gazelles wake up each morning knowing they must run to avoid being killed by lions while lions wake up knowing they must catch gazelles to survive.
Whether you’re a gazelle or a lion, Mr. Gamberg said, “When the sun comes up, you better be running.”
His goal, he told board members, is to examine everything the district does in terms of its effect on improving educational excellence.
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