"Four legs good, two legs bad!"

"The only reason to oppose these bills is if you believe the status quo is acceptable."

Governor Christie, announcing proposed legislation for teacher evaluation

Parse that sentence. Tell me if it makes sense.

Maybe he got misquoted--these things happen. But if he did not, he's playing a dangerous game.

Other possibilities I considered and dismissed, maybe too quickly:

• He believes what he says, and is incapable of seeing any point of view bar his own.
• He's not quite as bright as your average U.S. Attorney.
• He's a huge fan of Animal Farm.
• He does not have a great grasp of stats, and cannot see the problems with using the testing as data for evals--to be fair, a lot of folks have trouble with stats, but he's got people who can brief him, if he cares to listen.

Dr. Baker says it so much better here:

"Let’s make this really simple - IT’S PLAINLY ILLOGICAL TO BLAME SUCCESS OR FAILURE ON A FACTOR THAT DOESN’T VARY ACROSS SUCCESSFUL AND FAILING SCHOOLS. That’s just middle school science logic. Perhaps we should fire the middle school science teachers who taught the current crop of ed reformers?"

 Does put a new spin on the bully pulpit.
Pic is file photo from same article linked above.

SMARTER is Orwellian

This is a bit of a windy post mostly so I can find the links I need when I have the time to dig deeper into this.

I recently realized that few teachers know what's coming down the pike, and I want to bone up on the nonsense so I can share it.

We just finished the HSPA's this week, our form of state testing required by the No Child Left Behind Act. I continued to teach during the week, but my lambs' brains were fried by the time they got to class each day, and I doubt a whole lot of neurons got remodeled.

We get to do this again in May for a couple of days, during the NJ Biology EOC exam NJ Biology Competency Test.

New Jersey has joined the SMARTER Balanced Assessment Consortium (SBAC), along with 30 other states in a nationalized testing mechanism that proctors "required summative exams (offered twice each school year)" and "optional formative, or benchmark, exams" before the summatives. The federal gummint has already given the consortium (a word I am developing a real distaste for) over $175 million.

New Jersey has agreed to start using the SBAC tests for "federal accountability assessments" by the 2014-2015 school year, now less than 4 years away.

I figured the Orwellian 1984 world eventually come, but I thought we'd get a chance to squawk for a moment before it arrived. We now have in place a nationalized curriculum with a federalized testing mechanism that will use artificial intelligence to routinely assess your child's ability to fit into the "real" corporate world that awaits her, propped up by obscene amounts of money made by the same corporate world.

Every family in Bloomfield pays a lot--thousands of dollars--to support our schools. They are local, and they are public. They are designed to help our town raise knowledgeable and decent human beings live reasonably happy lives, and we do a pretty good job doing that.