What's wrong with the standardization movement, in a nutshell:

[Reader Rabbit]

One curriculum to rule them all, One curriculum to find them, One curriculum to bring them all and in the darkness bind them.

From National Teacher Sick-out
http://www.facebook.com/?ref=home#!/pages/National-Teacher-Sick-out/207898325908234?sk=info
http://sickout.org/

[patrice]

1. How do we know whether this characterization is accurate or not? Though I do agree

with some of the issues listed on the linked FB page, I also know that part of the problem as I have experienced it is that the relationship between standards and what schools/teachers are doing is not appropriately articulated. Either the standards are the wrong standards, e.g. teaching to the test, or valid standards take precedence over what is appropriate to a given level of individual development, or the the standards are ignored in favor of a facade that is called education, or the relationship between standards & what is actually happening in classrooms is erratic.

I think there needs to be a balance between valid appropriate standards and the relatively unique skills and aptitudes of individual persons. Professionally accountable teachers are in the best position to articulate that balance. They should be enabled to do so by giving them the power and resources to do what needs to be done for their students and that includes appropriate class-sizes and competitive salaries and benefits.

[patrice]

2. Does "One curriculum" = standardized tests? or standards in general? If it's the latter,

what is wrong with agreeing about what range of functionalities we'd like to see as outcomes for our money & efforts?

[patrice]

3. What "standardization movement"? Are you referring to standardized tests?

Standardization, of which standardized tests are just one example, is a rational process that does have SOME (not ALL) valid uses.

The problems come from things like:
- specific traits of the specific standardization process itself that produces the particular standardized tests/and other materials being used (e.g. text books);
- exclusive emphasis upon standardized tests to the exclusion of most other forms of appropriate human development;
- institutionalized (in school systems AND amongst parents) lack of support for more authentic forms of assessment and evaluation.

Standardization itself is useful. Problems come from its abuse. This results in imbalances between standards:individuals.

[damntexdem]

4. And RW pols cry out "My Precious!"

;-)

[patrice]

5. Standardization can also be about the processes by means of which something is shared, NOT

necessarily what that something itself is.

This is an important point that would be relevant to authentic assessment/evaluation, especially in contrast to exclusive use of standardized tests. In this sense standardization SUPPORTS something that could be the opposite of what standardized tests are.

[patrice]

6. Hello? Hello? Are you suggesting that there should be NO shared standards? Or just no

standardized tests?

If it is the latter, is it not possible that the problems are about how the tests are created and used? . . . and not so much that there should be some SHARED way of identifying/describing the effect of whatever it is that we are referring to when we use the word "education"?

As an ex-teacher/parent, I'd really like clarification of this point, please.

[proud2BlibKansan]

7. The standards are too specific

They should be much broader. Bring back local control - starting with curriculum.

[patrice]

8. They should be about processes that the TEACHER shapes appropriately, including Authentic Assessment

and more Developmentally appropriate portfolio that is processed, like a computer program, purposefully according to consensus about what how student products are characterized by traits that the teacher herself defines and documents, stuff we have been doing all along, but with wider categories for content and equal weighting for differences in developmental areas that are identified by the teacher.

Authentic Assessment is Qualitative
Standardized Assessment IS Quantitative, an empirically rationally based process that is useful, but it's only half of the story, if that.

This country is long over-due for a more popular discussion of grading in our education that addresses the broader architecture that can be customized by evaluation instruments that are both quantitative/standardized and qualitative/individually "authentic" and teachers define the more specific curricular decisions in situ on their own authority as professionals.

[txlibdem]

11. Sounds great, just like my 10th grade science teacher was able to do

During the module about evolution he said that he didn't believe any of that crap about evolution and that none of us will be marked down if we missed those questions on the test.

Yeah. Teachers should be able to evaluate the material and make their own tests, score their own tests.

And now that I live in Texas, we have a group of 10 right wingers who've removed Thomas Jefferson from the history books, among other atrocities.

[Reader Rabbit]

9. Top-down mandated standardization leads to dehumanization...

...of both teacher and student. Focus falls on the thing, the number, the fact, rather than on the person. When outsiders demand the teacher focus on a test score or a learning target or a specified piece of curriculum, it detracts from a teacher's ability to see the whole student.

Too much of the educational "reform" lately demands only the attention of the left hemisphere of the brain, and seeks to exclude the input of the right hemisphere. But the right hemisphere is what makes human beings capable of empathy and of seeing the big picture. The current obsession with data, assessment, and the like is harmful to our kids on the most basic neurological level.

[RetAZEd]

10. Gates, Pearson, CCSS & $$$$

http://rdsathene.blogspot.com/2011/05/professor-michael-moore-cornering.html#links

This is a great post by a Georgia professor, connecting the dots on who will benefit.

[QED]

12. $2.3 billion? Holy cow!

"The testing business is a $2.3 billion business. But testing is not where the real money is made. If you want to pass the test, you're going to need preparation materials."