Tag Archives: testing

I wanted to open this post with a cute joke rhyming joke, but it turns out nothing rhymes with local control, Common Core, or assessments. Unfortunately for you, this means you get serious Eddie today. Maybe it’s for the best—issues surrounding testing, local control, and the Common Core are pretty serious these days. As the debate over Common Core and its associated assessments continues to heat up, things are likely to get even more serious. The argument for local control in testing is growing louder and stronger, and leaders at every level of the Colorado education system are beginning to ask very serious (and very important) questions about where power ought to reside when it comes to standards and assessments. Today, those questions were most prominent at a State Board of Education meeting in Denver. Toward the end of a meeting segment aimed at better understanding assessment options in the state, both Vice Chairman Marcia Neal and Chairman Paul Lundeen voiced concerns about increasing federal influence in Colorado’s education system. Lundeen called on Colorado to find ways to return power to the local level while maintaining acceptable levels of accountability. Both members acknowledged that any major change will take time, […]

Olympic excitement has taken hold. All eyes are on China to watch the best swimmers, runners, cyclists, gymnasts, boxers, weightlifters, shooters, and ballplayers compete at the highest level and represent their countries under the brightest lights on the international stage. But there’s another Olympics taking place, as well. The Thomas Fordham Foundation has created the Education Olympics website, as a way to measure America’s education performance versus other nations, according to a series of different measures. After two events, Finland and Norway have taken home the gold, while the United States has been shut out of the medal count so far. You can stay tuned with video clips that provide “coverage” of the “events”. Here’s hoping – and all but expecting – that the United States will perform better in the real Summer Olympics in Beijing than in the Education Olympics.

There’s a big hubbub today about CSAP results being announced. For those of you who don’t know, CSAP stands for Colorado Student Assessment Program – it’s the battery of tests in reading, writing, math, and science that help people to see how well schools and students are performing. The folks in the Education Policy Center and others like them get really excited on days like this, because of all the new information and what story it might tell. I guess this year is really special, because a new “growth model” has been introduced that allows for better measurement of individual student and school progress from year to year. Me? I haven’t had to take any CSAPs yet – frankly, I could do without tests altogether. But I understand why many people might think they are important. Anyway, the Rocky Mountain News has the basic rundown on the latest CSAP scores, and once again, hoped-for progress is not being achieved: Results were up in 11 of the 24 tests given in reading, writing and math in grades 3 through 10. Scores were down in seven tests and unchanged in six. Reading and math scores were generally up, with more grades seeing […]