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Saturday, August 24, 2019

Education Reform a world without humanity


About our Policymakers, Mainstream Media, and Legislators.
They have no idea any norm reference assessment will always indicate half fall above the mean, and half fall below. They become like deer in the highlights as soon as some mentions test scores.
With the two major types of assessments used in education are one Norm Reference and Criterion Reference Tests.

1. They have no idea any norm reference assessment will always indicate half fall above the mean, and half fall below. Thus no matter who you test half will always look like they fall below the mean. If it shows anything else then the assessment is invalid. This type of test Mainstream Media love to report that half of the population are unable...you can fill in the blank ______________.

2. Criterion Reference Tests are performance-based mastery assessments, depending on what you call mastery 70%, 75%, 80%, most people choose 75%. By the way, these cut off scores are judgment calls, not objective calls at all. Policymakers determine proficiency levels and passing scores on criterion-referenced tests in my professional opinion are highly subjective or misleading. The potential consequences are particularly significant, with tests used to make high-stakes decisions about students, teachers, and schools.

If I wanted to make it look like our schools are failing I would raise the proficiency level, and keep teachers out of any decision defining cut off scores or defining what it means. In other words, this is what we have now. Assessments made to make children, teachers, and public schools look like they are doing poorly. Of course, this is just my professional opinion, other professionals may disagree with me.  The way Criterion Reference Assessments are being used today show even higher rates of failure than Norm Reference tests. More importantly, they are far far more expensive to develop and create. If I wanted to make a whole lot of money on testing children, these would be my go-to assessments. Over time, I could charge states hundreds of millions, even billions with these.

Regardless of the standardized assessment, our policymakers have ignored the history of racial, linguistic, gender biases, and a hundred years of Eugenics history.  Eugenic scientists went as far as sterilizing 70,000 women because they knew better than the women they sterilized. These women had no court of appeal.

Any standardized test that is determined to be more reliable or valid than the voices of those closest to the child? Is an assessment system void of any sense of humanity. Why? Why? Why? Our children have become monetized into a system that reduces them to test scores that feed profits driven by convincing American our public schools are failing. Why? I can think of only one reason for sustaining an assessment where children, parents, and teachers have no voice. Only "MONEY" can drive this kind of inhumanity. If you like to hear the song that inspired my walk this morning its the Ojays Money Money Money https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ll3uipTO-4A

"Some people got to have it
Some people really need it
Listen to me why'all, do things, do things, do bad things with it
You want to do things, do things, do things, good things with it
Talk about cash money, money
Talk about cash money- dollar bills, why'all
For the love of money
People will steal from their mother
For the love of money
People will rob their own brother"


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