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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsFrankenstein Fears His Monster: The Gates Foundation Wants You To Boycott High-Stakes Tests
https://www.commondreams.org/view/2014/06/13-1 the Gates Foundation agrees with those whove decided that assessment results should not be taken into account in high-stakes decisions on teacher evaluation or student promotion for the next two years, during this transition. Vicki Phillips, director of the U.S. education program at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation
How do you know the United States is currently experiencing the largest revolt against high-stakes standardized testing in history?
Because even the alchemists responsible for concocting the horrific education policies designed to turn teaching and learning into a test score have been shaken hard enough to awaken from the nightmare scenario of fast-tracking high-stakes Common Core testing across the nation. The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation issued a stunning announcement on Tuesday, saying that it supports a two-year moratorium on attaching high-stakes to teacher evaluations or student promotion on tests associated with the new Common Core State Standards.
Labor journalist Lee Sustar put it perfectly when he said of the Gates Foundations statement, Dr. Frankenstein thought things got out of hand, too.
The mad-pseudoscientists at the Gates Foundation have been the primary perpetrators of bizarre high-stakes test experiments in teacher evaluations, even as a growing body of researchincluding a report from the American Statistical Associationhas debunked the validity of value added method testing models. The Gates Foundation has used its immense wealth to circumvent the democratic process to create the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) with very little input from educators. As Rethinking Schools editor Stan Karp wrote of the Common Core development process:
Because federal law prohibits the federal government from creating national standards and tests, the Common Core project was ostensibly designed as a state effort led by the National Governors Association, the Council of Chief State School Officers, and Achieve, a private consulting firm. The Gates Foundation provided more than $160 million in funding, without which Common Core would not exist According to teacher educator Nancy Carlsson-Paige: In all, there were 135 people on the review panels for the Common Core. Not a single one of them was a K3 classroom teacher or early childhood professional. Parents were entirely missing. K12 educators were mostly brought in after the fact to tweak and endorse the standardsand lend legitimacy to the results.
enough
(13,259 posts)Reading the full statement linked in the article, they are saying they want a transition period so that teachers can come to trust the tests, understand the tests, and prepare for the tests.
The clear assumption is that the tests will be used as intended after the two-year transition period. Although why the Gates Foundation gets to decide this is beyond me.
Brigid
(17,621 posts)Why do a private foundation and a private, for-profit company (Pearson) have so much influence over something as important as education?
One of the few strokes of good fortune I've had in my life is that I don't have kids and don't have to deal with this crap.
Smarmie Doofus
(14,498 posts)... they ( i.e. "The mad-pseudoscientists at the Gates Foundation" imagined.
Reminds me of Bush (and Clinton) re. Iraq.
Whodathunkit.