With spring comes heightened concerns about public school students facing high-stakes standardized tests and the troubling focus on testing rewards, testing pep rallies, and test prep boot camps. It makes schooling and a student’s worth all about the test. Testing is a serious business. Test results have been used to rate teacher performance unfairly, and […]
Anxiety and Depression in the Age of the Super Student
The U.S. Preventative Services Task Force, a group of doctors, recently recommended screening children as young as eight for major depressive disorder (MDD). How do eight-year-olds wind up depressed? Depression they say could show up with functional impairments in school performance. Could it be in part because this is the age of the super student? […]
Dear Dr. Cardona: Punitive Student Assessment is Meant to Privatize Public Schools!
Education Secretary Miguel Cardona recently wrote to tell state education departments not to use test data punitively after the pandemic. He doesn’t seem to understand the history of high-stakes testing and its use to privatize public schools. From Cardona: The purpose of this letter is to remind all who report and interpret student outcomes this […]
14 MORE Ways Teachers are Disrespected!
Add these to the previous list. 1. Data Teachers are tired of relentless data collection and don’t like being conduits for companies to collect and track information on students, families, and themselves. Improving privacy laws for children has been slow going. Here’s a video covering concerns about data collection in schools. Here’s a description of […]
Education Secretary Cardona, End Third Grade Retention and High-Stakes Standardized Testing!
The Biden administration chose a real educator to be education secretary. Now Dr. Cardona should move to end third-grade retention, a procedure that would be especially cruel administered with this pandemic. Many alternative plans are available to help children do better in school that won’t involve the humiliation of retention. Cardona should withhold federal funds […]