Taking the A2K pluse on high stakes, standardized testing in schools

@hawkeye10,

Which is why I was talking about testing in general, which I do know something about.

You're just smarting because I handed your arse to you on a plate on the BLM thread. That's why you're trying to pick a fight.

This is off topic, lets stick to the subject matter, there's plenty of other threads where you can be made to look stupid. Let's leave this thread out of it.

1 Reply

@izzythepush,

leaving aside that you are factually incorrect at multiple points, I like Boomer, this is an important subject and one that I have been interested in for years.

Quote:

Let's leave this thread out of it.

I am cool with that.

0 Replies

@maxdancona,

I wouldn't doubt it.

0 Replies

@hawkeye10,

Quote:

I got told that her and me could not do anything about it so there was no point in thinking or talking about it.

It could be the teacher hates these tests as much as you - I know many teachers feel this way and they probably have this conversation with many parents -

I was thinking because max was saying he opted out for his kids in elementary - I may have not known about that because my kids were in private school in elementary so even though they did have a standardized test it wasn't the same and they didn't put any emphasize on it for the kids - it was so the teachers/schools could see overall how the kids were learning and if there were areas they needed to focus more on. So there was no pressure on getting good grades - more of a pulse check overall.

2 Replies

@Linkat,

Quote:

I was thinking because max was saying he opted out for his kids in elementary

I didn't say that. I gave my daughter the option of taking the MCAS tests. She opted herself in.

1 Reply

@maxdancona,

sorry meant to say you had the option to opt out.

0 Replies

@Linkat,

Quote:

It could be the teacher hates these tests as much as you

At the time I thought it was "we dont care what parents think"...this was on base at Ft Huachuca so that would not be unusual, I got that thinking sometimes from teachers and administration. But a few years after I was thinking about it and the old light bulb went off. Yes, I think she hated the program as much as I did, and shut me down right away with vigour so that she was not forced to defend it.

BTW there was not opt out.

0 Replies

Click link for entire story....15 minutes for lunch?? and half of that spent standing in line for it. Can't let kids enjoy an adequate amount of time to eat some food when standardized tests need to be taken, can we? Gotta get them ready for college, so they can get a job where they eat at their desk everyday.

http://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2015/09/24/439487395/kids-who-are-time-crunched-at-school-lunch-toss-more-and-eat-less

Most of the kids in the U.S. don't get much time to eat lunch. And by the time those kids wait in line and settle down to eat, many of them feel rushed.

And a recent study suggests that this time crunch may be undermining good nutrition at school.

Eric Rimm, a professor of epidemiology and nutrition at the Harvard School of Public Health, and a group of colleagues observed about 1,000 students, grades 3 to 8, at lunch time in a low-income urban school district in Massachusetts.

The researchers took note of what students put on their trays. And they also tracked what was left on their trays at the end of lunch period.

"Kids who had less than 20 minutes to eat were consuming, across the board, less of everything," Rimm told us.

As they report in the Journal of the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics, the researchers saw these students eating 13 percent less of their main entree and 12 percent less of their vegetables. They drank 10 percent less milk, too, compared with students who had 25 minutes or more to eat. They also found more food waste among kids who had less time to eat.

"Many children, especially those from low-income families, rely on school meals for up to half their daily energy intake, so it is essential that we give students a sufficient amount of time to eat their lunches," Juliana Cohen, Rimm's colleague at Harvard and the study's lead author, said in a statement.

And, Rimm adds, giving kids enough time to eat is also important for building healthy eating habits.

"Kids learn a lot at school. They should [also] learn how to eat slowly and enjoy their food," Rimm says.

Students at Lowell High School in Michigan sit down for lunch. Shorter lunch breaks mean that many kids don't get enough time to eat and socialize.

Yet in many public schools across America, the school lunch hour has shrunk to just 15 minutes.

In a poll conducted in 2013 by NPR, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the Harvard School of Public Health, 20 percent of parents of students from kindergarten through fifth grade told us that their child gets 15 minutes or less to eat. And even in schools that officially have longer lunch periods, the actual time kids get to spend at the table can be far shorter.

One issue driving abbreviated lunch periods: the increased pressure to boost time in the classroom – and standardized test scores. As Julia Bauscher, then-president of the national School Nutrition Association, told us in 2013, the lunch period is often the first place administrators look for extra instruction time.

A school lunch tray featuring whole wheat tortillas at the School Nutrition Association conference in July 2014. The association is asking Congress to relax the federal school nutrition standards in hopes of attracting more kids back to the school lunch line.
THE SALT
Class Divide: Are More Affluent Kids Opting Out Of School Lunch?
And there's another factor that may be adding to longer lines and less table time: As we've reported, the number of school children receiving free meals under the National School Lunch program has increased in recent years, according to a report last year from the Government Accountability Office. When we spoke to her in 2013, Bauscher also cited this increased participation as one factor behind longer lunch lines. She oversees nutrition services for Jefferson County Public Schools in Kentucky, where 70 percent of students participate in meals programs.

Some Salt readers have told us in comments that longer lines may be behind another trend in the school cafeteria: fewer students are buying lunch. As we recently reported, the number of students who pay full price for school meals declined by 1.6 million, or about 5 percent, in recent years. After we posted that story on Facebook, many of our followers told us that long lines and short meal times were a significant factor in why their children were now brown-bagging it.

Brenna Zesiger D'Ambrosio is a Chicago writer and mom with two children in the city's public elementary schools.

She says in her kids' schools, many students opt out of buying school lunch due to time constraints. "They have 15 minutes max for lunch and the line for school lunch takes half of that," she told us via Facebook. "My elementary students cannot eat fast enough and end up hungry (and distracted) later in the day if they choose the school option."

So for her child who is a particularly slow eater, D'Ambrosio says she always packs a lunch from home.

0 Replies

We can add pre-school and head start to the list of educational reforms that were implemented without study with claims that it was a proven good idea but after the fact when studied turn out not to work. Slate however claims that it is still great because it works day care, in some places free to the parents day care. They also still insist upon call it an education program.

http://www.slate.com/articles/double_x/doublex/2015/10/new_study_questions_the_value_of_universal_pre_k_tell_that_to_working_mothers.html

THe " get them is school earlier" idea was around back in the 70's, and they are only just now trying to figure out if it works or not? And now that we think it does not work as an education program we are supposed to keep doing it anyways? Why? Let the kids play I say, it is probably better for them anyways.

1 Reply

There was an interesting juxtaposition of articles in my (very pro-testing) newspaper yesterday.

The front page article was "Portland Students Aren't Put To Test". It states that a typical student in a big city school takes about eight standardizes test a year while our students only take two.

The inside article was "Oregon stays average as national math scores drop".
It says that 30 states saw their scores drop on the NEAP but Oregon's remained stable in both math and reading.

Strangely, one of the conclusions they drew from this is that

Quote:

A study released Monday found that, give its relatively advantaged student demographics, Oregon students shout outscore the national average if its schools were as effective as those in other states. Oregon's very average performance suggests its schools are doing a slightly below average job of teaching elementary and middle school reading and math, that study by the Urban Institute found.

So, of course, I started wondering why Oregon has "relatively advantaged student demographics" when articles like this are not uncommon:

Quote:

Oregon experienced one of the nation's most severe increases in people living in areas of concentrated poverty during the first decade of this century, according to a new Census Bureau study of living situations in 2000 and 2010.

It was one of just four states -- all in the South except Oregon -- where the share of people living in census tracts with a high share of impoverished residents shot up more than 15 percentage points over that period.

http://www.oregonlive.com/education/index.ssf/2014/07/oregons_huge_increase_in_peopl.html

The only thing I can really come up with that they might mean by "advantaged" is that the state is overwhelmingly Caucasian.

I still trying to connect the dots but information is so scattered that it's hard to do....

1 Reply

@hawkeye10,

I agree with the conclusion the came to in that article:

Quote:

If you aren’t convinced that early childhood education gives children a big leg up, you can still consider what it would do for their parents. The benefit they would see—particularly for mothers still caught between jobs and families—is irrefutable.

I'm not a fan of early academics for kids. Mo never went to preschool and people thought I was crazy not to send him. I see preschool mania all the time on a parent's forum I visit. It's pretty much considered mandatory these days, even by people who can afford to stay home instead of working.

I am a fan of universal day care/preschool/whatever you want to call it, though. I think it would be money well invested.

1 Reply

To explain what a happens to a student that is not the best test taker - my daugther is in honors spanish - she had one test and got in the 60s she went to her teacher and asked for help/what she did wrong - her teacher said I am not worried about you - I know you understand the material I can tell in class. So her grade average was a low C or high D can't remember.

Then she has a presentation - which is graded at a test level - the teacher's comment after she was done - that was flawless - she gets a 100. Now she has a high B.

She has a C in pre-calculus - she went to the teacher for help because she bombed a test. He said almost a similar thing - you are one of the smartest kids in the class - it looks like you just over think and question yourself. He didn't offer up much help - I am hoping this next test will boost her grade back up.

She takes Advanced Placement Science - her test grades are Bs, her labs and projects are As.

This is what happens to someone who doesn't take tests well and who has gets stressed when taking tests. Fortunately for her, the higher level classes -- honors and AP - have alot of projects and presentations so it helps keep her GPA higher.

1 Reply

@boomerang,

Quote:

I am a fan of universal day care/preschool/whatever you want to call it, though. I think it would be money well invested.

Me too but but what the kids do when they are there matters, and lets be honest about why we are funding the project. The lack of honesty in this society today really bothers me. So often the lack of knowing if something works or even caring if it works, bothers me. The poor job we do at trying to create smart happy adults bothers me. There should be universal day care to those not yet in primary school, with parents paying on a sliding scale, but most of the time they should not be doing academics. But the parents would insist upon it. And it would not be good for the kids.

in 2015 the best place for a kid not yet in school to be is pretty much anywhere else other than in a pre-K school program. Hell, they would probably be better off at alcholic grandma's with no one to play with.

1 Reply

@boomerang,

Quote:

The only thing I can really come up with that they might mean by "advantaged" is that the state is overwhelmingly Caucasian.

With particular emphasis on "Not Black", which is of course a problem for the lefty set to admit, both that blacks dont want to hang in Oregon and that not having all the problems that come with having underclass blacks is a blessing. Did you notice the extent that New Orleans went to to get rid of a huge chunk of their underclass blacks after Katrina (by simply refusing to build places for them to live) , and while you still hear some groveling about it very few of those currently in New Orleans feels very guilty about it?

0 Replies

@Linkat,

Quote:

This is what happens to someone who doesn't take tests well and who has gets stressed when taking tests.

I used to have more sympathy for people who dont test well, and when I was homeschooling I dont think I ever gave a test other than spelling, but I have come around to the idea that test taking is a skill that can be learned and that making people master it to succeed in school is not abuse.

I do think that we need to deal with what I think is exploding levels of anxiety in todays youth, which is brought on by "over helping" parenting, and I hate todays solution of dealing with this by drugging the kids. A Yoga teacher I know says the solution is to get these kids into Yoga, maybe she is right, maybe that is a solution to test anxiety.

1 Reply

@hawkeye10,

The parent's forum I visit has a pretty good group of people but the "build a better baby crowd" is insane!

Half the people are convinced their toddler is "gifted".

If someone's kid is having trouble with school it's always suggested that "they're probably gifted and bored with school".

Parents absolutely are behind the push for academics in the early years.

1 Reply

@hawkeye10,

She is learning how to deal with stress with relaxation exercises and such (probably not much different than yoga) - and learning test taking skills - we did discuss how it is part of life so you gotta learn how best to deal with it.

0 Replies

@boomerang,

Quote:

but the "build a better baby crowd" is insane!......Parents absolutely are behind the push for academics in the early years

Did you see the movie Parenthood with Steve Martin Mary Steenburgen, Dianne Wiest et al? There are some really good scenes about this subject, and it is one hell of a good movie overall.

EDIT: You know of course that I was on the side of the Steenburgen charactor, she actually reminds me of how I parent, or actually I was probably taking lessons. We went to this movie with another set of young parents, they with more kids than us. We went to Pizza Hut after and talked at length about this movie, about parenting.

EDIT2: these days though I am taking something from the Wiest character, that line to the effect " I dont need to figure out all of life, I just want to help you get what you want" has come out of my mouth a few times over the last 5 years or so. I have one kid who is super liberal where as I am trending more towards the conservative side as the years wear on, but she knows that I am always in her corner because she is my kid.

0 Replies

Taking the A2K pluse on high stakes, standardized testing in schools

Related Topics

Quick Links

My Account

able2know