\”It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.\”

Wow, I survived and I had fun doing it! I have to be honest, the idea of blogging for this classroom scared the [bleep] outta me when I first heard about it. But now that it’s over and as I look back, I realized that it was quite the experience. I had never blogged before, well, not including the usual Myspace blogs about a boyfriend dumping me, getting a new cell phone and needing numbers, or I just buying a new car. That’s NOT blogging…

I learned a lot through this assignment. I really loved how we could pick a topic that was interesting to us. I chose the effect of technology on students and standardized testing, and I feel that it was quite a success. I started off kind of bumpy, having a hard time finding good articles about technology in schools, and then for the last three blogs, I finally found some that were of some importance to me and that I could relate to.

I’m not going to say that I am now a pro at blogging, but I have come a long way and have definitely improved from the Myspace blogs. HA, I still laugh to think about some that I have wrote on that. Anyway, thank you all for a great semester and thank you professor Rozema for all the help you have provided for me, the advice, the knowledge to become an educated blogger, but most importantly, the knowledge to become a teacher.

Sincerely,

Christie

Comment on Carrie’s blog “You are What You Measure”

Comment on Carrie’s blog “Presidential Candidates on NCLB”

Comment on Dan’s blog “Too Much Technology?…Really?”

Comment on Eli’s Blog “Some Interesting Ideas…”

Comment on Eric’s Blog “Let’s Go Ban Books!”

Comment on Nathan’s Blog “Novels on Myspace”

Comment on Shakura’s Blog “Student Teachers”

Comment on Eric’s Blog “Should her Job be Gone?”

Comment on Walter’s Blog “Let Us Now Praise Student Journalists”

Comment on Dan’s Blog “Cell Phones in School”

If any of you see any of my other comments that I have not listed (if there are any), please let me know…. THANKS!

Someone in the state’s educational establishment has finally shown some sense about testing.

Oh my goodness, I found an article bashing standardized testing! YES! haha  I did not think that was possible, but while looking through my feed on standardized testing, I came across this article from the Winston-Salem Journal that explains that standardized testing is BAD.

The Blue Ribbon Commission on Testing and Accountability has recommended that the State Board of Education significantly reduce the number of standardized tests that our children take in the public schools.

The commission agreed that the fourth-, seventh-, and tenth-grade writing tests should be eliminated as well as the eighth-grade computer skills tests.  They also suggested that five end-of-course exams for high school students should be cut, leaving only five exams total.  That’s a little better, haha.

The commission also stated that there is even better news; that two of the science exams scheduled to being this year will NOT be counted for state purposes.

Let’s face the facts.  This wave of testing that started a dozen or so years ago is designed for one purpose-to give politicians cover.  The tests have little to do with educating children.  In truth, they probably harm the education our children get.  And all the testing, especially in the early grades, helps make our children crazy with stress.

Politicians began calling for more exams as a way of demonstrating that the schools were improving.  But a child’s education is not like a potted plant’s growth pattern.  It can’t be measured with definite precision.  That’s why teachers often count many factors into a child’s grade-not just test results but also classroom contributions, homework, originality and creativity.

STANDARDIZED TESTS DON’T MEASURE WHETHER A CHILD IS CREATIVE OR IMAGINATIVE.  THEY MEASURE ONLY WHETHER THE CHILD CAN SPIT BACK WHAT THE SCHOOL HAS FED HIM OR HER.

AMEN!  haha  Wow I love whoever wrote this article.  Because the tests are so specific in what the students need to learn, the teachers are obligated to teach them only what is called for on the tests.  That leaves no room for broadening their imaginations, let alone the teacher’s.  When the standardized test results are so important, the curriculum of the school becomes focused on the test.  Teachers are told by the school administrators what to teach and when to teach it.  What’s the fun in that?  By doing that,  we are not engaging young minds to learn and we are definitely not encouraging them to want to learn if they are being forced to learn.  And what about the students who are not great test takers?  They may be excellent learners and strongly understand the material being taught, but as soon as a test is placed in front of them, they get nervous and freeze up.  That is no way to grade a student.  As the article mentioned, teachers look for other factors when grading a child, not just how they perform on tests.  I think this is something we should really take into consideration, and the commission should, too!

This next quote from the article really shocked me.

The orgy of standardized testing requirements has also diminished the value of teachers.  Political candidates seek teachers’ votes with empty words about teacher professionalism, but then take away much of their professional discretion to teach children.

Umm…..I’m not even sure how to respond to this.  It’s kind of contradicting or hypocritical of itself.  Teachers are given the power to teach children, but then it’s taken away…how does that work?  I will end with this from the article which I believe best sums up what standardized tests do:

There is one person in the school system who knows better than everyone in the world whether little Johnny has learned how to read and calculate this year, and that is his teacher.  Even mom and dad probably won’t know as well as the teacher.  Yet the teacher’s judgment is stripped away by the standardized exam and, if Johnny tends to freeze up on exams, then the state says he can’t read.  This is simply foolish.

I’m really curious as to what other people have to say about this topic.  I will say this, during middle school and high school was the time when most of us are obligated to take these horrible, pointless tests.  When I was in middle school and high school, I never had an opinion on these tests, one being the MEAP.  Sure I knew that the school basically FORCED students to take this test so that they can look good if we all pass, but that was about it.  I never thought about how the tests only grade us on what the school was teaching us.  The tests do not grade us on how well we have learned, but how well the school was teaching us.  How does that help our own education? …

Trim the Tests

Winston-Salem Journal

Friday, November 30, 2007

Standardized testing that seeks to measure students’ English language proficiency has improved significantly nationwide since 2001, when Congress passed the No Child Left Behind Act, according to a UC Davis report released today [November 28, 2007].

I was shocked to have found an article that focused on standardized testing for English and NCLB. The article I read posted in the UCDAVIS is set in California, but I think it was important to read nonetheless because it can be applied to anywhere. Professor of Education at the University of California, and editor of the report, Jamal Abedi believes that testing students in English proficiency plays a huge role in the success of the nation’s estimated 5million English learners. Abedi states:

This is important because one of the greatest influences on English language learners’ academic careers, when instructed and assessed in English, is their level of English proficiency.

I agree with this statement.  If you’re going to pursue a career in the English language, you must be proficient in that language.  I’m not saying that I’m perfectly proficient in English, but I have seen many other English students who would like to pursue a career in this language but they are struggling with learning it.  The best way, and I feel the only way to tell whether or not a student is proficient is to test them.  You can’t always tell just by talking to someone.  A lot of the mistakes come out in writing as well.

The No Child Left Behind Act mandated reliable, valid annual assessments of students’ English proficiency.  In response, the U.S. Department of Education awarded grants to four consortia of states in 2002, and directed each to create and field-test a state-of-the-art assessment.

A report was made that summarized the results and progress of the four efforts.  The full report, “English Language Proficiency Assessment in the Nation: Current Status and Future Practice,” can be viewed here.

According to the previous report, approximately 25 states are now using at least one of the four tests.

The report found that there are still some technical issues to be resolved in English-proficiency testing.  Even so, unlike many of the pre-2001 tests, the newly developed tests;

• assess academic English as well as everyday English;
• are aligned with individual states’ English language proficiency academic standards;
• cover kindergarten through 12th grade, rather than focusing on a particular grade or age level;
• allow grade-to-grade comparisons as well as measurement of a range of proficiency levels within the same grade;
• assess speaking and listening, and not just written English;
• cannot be acquired independently by students or parents seeking an edge in high-stakes testing situations; and
• have proved valid and reliable through vigorous field testing: the tests accurately measure students’ English proficiency, and test results closely correlate with students’ performance in the classroom.

The two bullet points that I found interesting were: #3) cover kindergarten through 12th grade, rather than focusing on a particular grade or age level, and #5) assess speaking and listening, and not just written English.  I liked #3 because it allows people to look at the progress in proficiency the students have made and looks at that as a whole, not just a certain part.  They do not just grade the students on how proficient they are at a certain age/grade level, but look at how far they have come in learning the English language.  I liked #5 because, like what I said before, you can’t just grade the students on what they say, this bullet shows that they test the students in speaking and listening, as well as written English.

I will end with this:

Abedi, one of the country’s leading experts on standardized testing of English learners, ends the report with a chapter in which he recommends next steps.  Among them:

• Ensure all tests are tailored to the curriculum standards of each state that uses the test.
• Conduct research to ensure tests fairly assess all English learner subgroups.
• Use assessment results to help make informed decisions about English learner participation in standardized testing designed for native English speakers, since these tests may not be valid for students with lower levels of English proficiency.
• Ongoing review and field testing of the new assessments to ensure their quality.

The four consortia are listed in the article.

USDAVIS News and Information

November 28, 2007

Contacts: Jamal Abedi, School of Education

Donna Justice, School of Education

Claudia Morain, UC Davis News Service

Full Article here 

I am a huge advocate for technology in the classroom, so when I came across this article from Information Resources and Technologies, I was very eager to read what it said about students and technology. I also enjoyed how the article spoke of social networking programs (which I will touch on later in this blog), e.g. Facebook, because I am active with that program.

In the introduction to the report released by the Educause Center for Applied Research, Chris Dede of the Harvard School of Education writes that, “Our ways of thinking and knowing, teaching and learning, are undergoing a sea change…” but that more research is yet needed to fully understand and appreciate the options and opportunities that technology can provide to higher education.

As I mentioned before, I am a huge advocate for technology in the classroom, and I believe strongly that by allowing higher education students the opportunity to use technology greatly increases their knowledge of how to use it and incorporate it into their own lives. Technology is not just for higher education though. I was using computers in elementary school and was even taught, quite thoroughly, how to type properly. As I entered middle school, the teachers incorporated more technology into their classrooms and I actually made my first PowerPoint presentation in 7th or 8th grade. I feel that by having the teachers incorporate technology into their lessons, students are able to learn and understand what is being taught more clearly. The article I read was based on a study done by ECAR (Educause Center for Applied Research) and gathered information from freshmen and seniors to gain a better understanding of:

• Student engagement in technology-enabled classes
• Student perceptions regarding instructors’ use of technology and whether it improves their learning
• Student use of course management systems
• Benefits and barriers associated with using technology in course-related activities
• How students perceive their skills in using key information technologies
• Which technologies students own and how much time students spend engaged in technology-enabled activities

The article focuses on statistics from the 2006 and 2007 study which highlights how “technology impacts students’ academic experiences.”

I believe that there are many benefits of using technology to increase the academic ability of students and the article even pointed out a few that they found were most popular among the students of St. Thomas.

The main benefits that students see with using technology in courses are the convenience of accessing course materials at any time or anywhere, and for managing course activities. Nearly 56% of national respondents and 59% of UST respondents listed convenience as the most valuable aspect of using technology in courses. The study found that students who were currently using a learning management system, e.g., Blackboard, in their courses were more likely to choose convenience as the primary benefit of technology in courses.

I absolutely love how this article and study decided to point out the use of Blackboard in the classroom. The first time I ever experienced Blackboard was my freshmen year at the community college. The professor was not clear on what exactly it was or how to use it, but tried very hard for his students to become active in using it to keep track of in-class discussions and homework assignments. Now being a senior I have become quite experienced with Blackboard and realize that it’s nearly impossible to pass a class without it since the majority of schools and professors now use this system, or one similar. The survey conducted amongst St. Thomas students shows “a 13% increase in students’ use of a learning management system. The use of a learning management system such as Blackboard is fairly widespread-with 82% of survey respondents indicating that they have used an LMS.”

Of the Blackboard features that students find useful, features relating to convenience and access appear to be highly valued. … Tools in Blackboard that facilitate turning in assignments, receiving assignments back with instructor comments, and online sharing of materials among students are features that are less commonly used.

Very quickly I will touch on what the article said about social networking tools, but if you want to read more, check out the article itself. The use of social networking tools amongst students have increased which has caused the use of Blackboard for sharing materials among classmates to decrease.

Data from the study shows an increase in the percentage of respondents who use social networking tools such as Facebook, from 72.3% in 2006 to 80.3% in 2007. Nearly 70% of all participants and 46% of UST students report using social networking tools on a daily basis. … As the authors of the study are quick to note, although a large number of students use online social networking tools, most students do not use these technologies as a formal part of their courses. Focus groups conducted with national participants reveal that students consider technologies such as Facebook and Instant Messaging to be part of their private, rather than academic, lives.

I found the last part of this very interesting. I remember another blog that someone wrote about teachers now incorporating MySpace into their classroom and having their students create pages for different characters in a book. I believe that it is possible to incorporate Myspace, Facebook, and maybe even Instant Messaging into a classroom and get students involved in using that for their academic lives, since they are already familiar with it in their personal lives. This may be something I think about for my own classroom.

I will end on this note (and yes I realize that this blog is fairly lengthy, but there was a lot to cover):

An analysis conducted on open-ended responses identified five positive areas of the impact of technology on learning:

• Technology facilitates organization and control in the learning environment
• Technology can make content more accessible, including class materials and Internet resources
• Technology facilitates communication with faculty and classmates
• Technology in courses is valuable when directly linked to applications (e.g., Excel, PowerPoint, SPSS) that are useful to future employment
• Technology is an enabler of learning when faculty use it effectively

University of St. Thomas, Minnesota

Bulletin Today-Wednesday, November 28, 2007

Trends in Student Use of Information Technology: A Sea Change?

Designing educational policy to leave no child behind is the equivalent of driving forward by looking in the rear view mirror.

The article I read starts off by saying this. We should drop the name “No Child Left Behind” and make the defining goal for schools “A College Diploma in Every Hand.” According to the article, statistics show:

Americans with a bachelor’s degree earn roughly twice as much as those with a high school diploma. For young people who are the first in their families to graduate from college, a degree has the potential to dramatically change their life outcomes and end generations of poverty.

I can relate to this statement because I am the third Coddington (my dad’s side of the family) to attend a four year university. That is a high status in my family.

America is not making the grade when it comes to measuring college success. More than half of college students drop out within their first year of college. This article touched on standardized testing and preparing students for college. It stated that we should teach elementary and middle school students the basics; math, science, reading, and art, and that high school teachers should focus on preparing their students for college success.

High school students would not just learn history or science; they would practice being historians and scientists.

Schools should do more to prepare students for college success. Many schools now offer AP classes and I think this is a great start. But as for the standardized tests, are these really helping prepare students for what’s to come? Bob Lenz, author of this article believes that:

Rather than use standardized testing as the sole measure of learning, Congress should use college attendance and achievement rates for accountability in any comprehensive education bill.

I feel that this is true. We shouldn’t measure a school’s success merely on how well the students performed on the standardized tests. Students have different test taking skills, so this is not a fair way to judge a school’s success. Also looking back to the article, it mentions that “When you challenge students to put their mark on a subject, they will be more motivated to master the facts.” I feel that we need to do more to motivate our students to want to do well in school and to want to go to college. A college degree could change their life.

Article by Bob Lenz-the chief education officer and founder of Envision Schools, which operates four public high schools in the Bay Area.

San Fransisco Chronicle

Full Article Here 

The article I read, “Into the 21st Century: Technology, Teachers, and Nicky Future Ready,” was about schools in North Carolina implementing every kind of technology they can get their hands on into the classrooms. The author of this article, Terry Stoops states:

Yet catch phrases and buzzwords cannot hide the face that a “21st century education” is simply a more expensive and more bureaucratic of North Carolina’s current system of public schools…

The new and improved 21st century classroom would include a host of pricey electronic devices, gadgets, and toys, that, according to advocates, would put an end to silly, old-fashioned book learning.

When I first read this, I couldn’t understand why one classroom would need so much technology. Yeah it’s great and all, but is it really that necessary? I’m sure many classrooms could do without half the stuff that they have in them. Think back to when technology was just starting out. Students and teachers did not have much to work with, and some of the most intelligent scientists today grew up not knowing what a computer was.

North Carolina Newspapers in Education recently published a short introduction to 21st century education titled Making the Grade: Education for the 21st century. The tract explains:

In the ideal 21st century school, each school will have facilities and personnel that are necessary for a 21st century education. This includes individual classroom spaces — many with movable walls and flexible desk/table/cubicle configurations –and technology that is similar to what adults already use in the workplace. That means classrooms outfitted with an interactive digital whiteboard and data projector; a classroom set of individual student response devices; digital and video cameras; a telephone; one or more multimedia work stations that include printers, science probeware for experiments, digital microscopes and graphing scientific calculators for the upper grades.

Terry stoops believes that,

Advocates for “21st century schools” fail to explain how, for example, individual student response devices are preferable to students simply raising their hand, but that is not the point. The point is to convince parents that their child will be doomed to a life of destitution if he or she does not have access to individual response devices, science probeware, digital microscopes, and graphing scientific calculators–technology that most adults do not use (or need) in the workplace.

I agree with this 100%. As I mentioned before, many of the fancy gadgets classrooms have are not even needed, they are just their because the school could afford them and wanted to be up-to-date with the technology. The article even states that:

Elected officials and education leaders in our state have ignored the fact that educational technology has failed to improve student achievement in North Carolina in any significant way. Yet under the guise of the “21st century economy” they will continue to urge taxpayers to foot the bill for the latest ed-tech craze.

So is it really that necessary to spend so much money on high tech gear for students when it isn’t even improving their learning? Don’t get me wrong, I am all for technology in the classroom and learning new ways to use it and incorporate it. But I do not feel that schools should spend so much money on new tech. if teachers themselves don’t even learn how to use it, and if it doesn’t even improve the learning ability of the students.

Now you are problem wondering what the whole “Nicky Future Ready” thing is about in the title of the article, as well you should be. “Nicky Future Ready” is a cartoon character that was designed by North Carolina Department of Public Instruction’s Elementary Education Division. Here’s how the dept. describes Nicky.

Nicky Future was “born” this summer. He represents the elementary children we teach in our classrooms. Nicky is “labeled,” but not with negative labels and stereotypes. He is labeled with the attributes of a future ready student! Do the students in your school “wear” these labels, too? These are attributes every student will need to be globally competitive in the 21st century.

Nicky “wears” seventeen attributes: (1) self-directed responsible worker, (2) multi-lingual, (3) critical thinker, (4) effective communicator, (5) relationship builder, (6) health-focused life-long learner, (7) financially literate citizen, (8) creative/innovative thinker, (9) knowledgeable global citizen, (10) strong team contributor, (11) proficient reader, (12) science savvy, (13) literate consumer of media, (14) capable technology user, (15) effective problem solver, (16) curious researcher, and (17) skilled mathematician.

Wow these seem like high standards to set for an elementary student. Not sure how many elementary students will be multi-lingual, financially literate, science savvy skilled mathematician, or even a capable technology user. Yeah they will be able to accomplish some of these things to a degree, but they won’t be a pro.

Here is a link to show you what Nicky looks like. Nicky Future Ready

So overall, I feel that this article shows the advantages of technology but also the disadvantages of having too much. What Terry Stoops says about this issue pretty much sums up how I feel.

North Carolina’s children still need competent teachers and capable administrators, not classrooms full of technology or posters of cartoon characters, to be successful in school and beyond.

The Leland Tribune

Terry Stoops – Terry Stoops is an Education Policy Analyst for the John Locke Foundation

Full Article Here

O.k., where to begin. First of all, this was an awesome experience and I am so glad I made the decision to go. I had never been to any kind of academic conference before so I wasn’t sure what to expect. In the end I feel that this was a great experience and highly recommend any future teacher to attend. It helped a lot to be able to pick different sessions to listen to, ones that I was interested in hearing.

The conference started off with a keynote by Kathleen Blake Yancey which she called “Literacy, Technologies, and the 21st Century: Where We Have Been, Are Now, and Are Going”. She is a really good speaker, but I did find parts of her presentation boring; I knew most of it, it was pretty much common sense. Yancey’s presentation focused on three main points for the definition of 21st century literacy.

1)We have a choice of technologies, 2) We are networked, and 3) this kind of literacy requires intrapersonal knowledge, articulated through various forms of reflection.

W hat I really enjoyed about Yancey’s presentation was how she compared digital natives versus digital immigrants. This means, print natives learn from digital natives, and digital natives learn from print natives. Those who grew up knowing only how to write in cursive are learning from those who grew up/growing up knowing how to use computers and digital writing techniques.

The next speaker I listened to was by Jill VanAntwerp called “Hanging on by your Fingernails until you gain a Toehold: Advice for Future Teachers from New Teachers”. I chose to attend this session for two reasons, 1) Jill is from Grand Valley, and 2) her presentation was specifically for future teachers, which is where I fit in, or will fit in. Jill summarized her presentation by saying:

I will summarize some of my findings from 50 interviews with teachers in the Grand Rapids area (graduates from many colleges and teachers in many disciplines) about their orientation and induction periods as well as their first years. These teachers have a lot of good advice about how to handle those first years successfully.

I was extremely shocked with Jill’s statistic that 50% of new teachers leave the profession within the first five years. This actually quite scared me. I got to thinking that maybe this profession is harder than I thought. I just hope that after all this money I have spent to become something that I have wanted since I was in the first grade, that I do not become one of the 50%. Overall, I loved Jill’s presentation. I feel that it was very honest, coming from a teacher itself, and very practical. She spoke on many ideas for teachers to incorporate into their classrooms and things that go right when you first start teaching, and things that can go wrong. This opened my eyes and made me realize what I should look for and try to avoid once I start teaching.

The third session I attended was by Maja Wilson called “Why Rubrics Don’t Work for Me: Reclaiming Subjectivity in Writing Assessment”. Maja’s presentation was summarized as follows:

Rubrics represent writing assessment’s “view from nowhere”–our attempt to provide the illusion of objectivity by giving students a universal (generic) response to their work. Not only do rubrics fail in their attempt to be objective, but this very attempt keeps writing teachers from recognizing, honoring, and using the value of subjectivity in their teaching and assessment of writing. The presenter will show how current assessment practices are problematic, and will give examples of assessment conversations with students that help students become better writers at the same time that they value subjectivity.

Maja’s presentation opened my eyes to a few things. For starters, I always found myself a fan of rubrics. All through middle school and high school I had to write according to a rubric. This didn’t leave much room for imagination, but it was a starting place and kept me on track. It also prepared me for standardized tests, which I think is a big thing for rubrics. I do agree with Maja’s theory though, when she pointed out that grading by a rubric is objective. When we grade by a rubric, mainly for MEAP writing tests or other standardized tests, we are reading and grading what is written and not leaving ourselves or the student open for any imaginative thoughts or creativeness. Her presentation mainly focused on the MEAP and what the readers are looking for. I liked what Sarah Reaser said about this idea, “The MEAP rubric basically wants all of the readers to agree on what a good piece of writing looks like. When in reality writing means different things to different people.” In the end, I realized that rubrics should not be used in writing assessment, but students should be taught some specific forms to be prepared for what standardized tests are looking for.

Overall, I really enjoyed this conference and I hope to attend next year’s. I learned a great deal and plan to apply most of it to my own classroom.

Well I haven’t had much luck with finding articles on my other topic, technology in education, so I decided to scan through the feeds for standardized testing once again and came across another interesting topic; Parental Smoking Associated with Teens’ Below-Par Test Scores. According to this article, “Teenage exposure at home to second-hand tobacco smoke seems to go hand in hand with poor performance on standardized academic tests, investigators here [Philadelphia] found.” Statistics show:

If either parent smoked, a child had 25% to 30% higher failure rate compared with children of nonsmokers, Bradley Collins, Ph.D., of Temple University, and colleagues, reported in the October issue of the Journal of Adolescent Health. The higher failure rate held up for either ordinary or advanced-level examinations.

This never occurred to me that second-hand smoke could affect someone’s test taking abilities. I knew that smoking and second-hand smoke can cause lung cancer and other problems, but had no idea it could affect the academic outcome of a student. The article also stated that their study shows that “tobacco smoke is an environmental toxin that affects academic performance.”

The investigators analyzed data from 6,380 women and their offspring in the 1958 National Child Development Study. Pass-fail performance was assessed by means of British standardized achievement tests (ordinary-level and advanced-level). The results showed that prenatal exposure to environmental tobacco smoke did not affect test performance, whether assessed by ordinary-level or advanced-level exams. However, parental smoking significantly increased the likelihood of test failure on either test, as did the family’s socioeconomic status. Maternal smoking increased the likelihood of ordinary-level test failure by 29% and paternal smoking by 30%. Male sex and smoking by the teenager also increased the likelihood of test failure. In the advanced-level tests, maternal smoking increased the risk of test failure by 24% and paternal smoking increased the risk by 27%. The only other significant predictors of failure were female sex and smoking by the teenager. These data highlight the importance of helping parents create smoke-free homes for their children-outcomes that can be achieved without requiring the immediate parental smoking cessation. Indeed, parental smoking cessation is the ideal outcome in reducing the children’s environmental tobacco smoke exposure.

“Evidence herein should further encourage multipronged efforts to reduce adolescents’ environmental tobacco smoke exposure.” So how do we do that? How can we stop people from smoking? It’s nearly impossible for people to avoid smoke. Many restaurants now are 100% no smoking, as well as other commercial buildings. But what about the students who live with smokers? We can’t make a law to prohibit everyone from smoking just to help students do better on tests. Don’t get me wrong, I am all for not smoking, especially if smoking does affect test scores, but I don’t believe there is no logical way to get everyone to quit doing it. The article added, “An environmental tobacco smoke reduction intervention would be a positive alternative to quitting smoking for those parents not willing or ready to consider abstinence-only treatment.”

Full Article Here

Resource: medpagetoday.com
By Charles Bankhead, Staff Writer, MedPage Today
Reviewed by Zalman S. Agus, MD; Emeritus Professor at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine.
September 24, 2007

One of the topics that I chose to focus on during this semester is standardized testing and why/why it’s not important. I came across an article that focused on NCLB and the idea of standardized testing. I was amazed once I started reading this article, because the idea of it was to get rid of the NCLB law completely. When I read the first line, “The federal No Child Left Behind Act is a failure,” I just had to keep reading to figure out why because so many people make such a big shpeel about this Act and its importance. The main point of this article is to reauthorize this act. According to Congressman George Miller, D-Solano and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-San Francisco, the Act is flawed. Miller and Pelosi are both attempting to reauthorize this Act, but by doing so, they are not fixing the most flawed parts. According to TheReporter.com, “they are making it worse by adding amendments that would further punish our students and discourage future teachers from entering the profession.”

This article shocked me because I always thought that the NCLB Act was made to help students in education and provide equal opportunities for them. But according to this article, it’s just making education for these students worse. “The Miller/Pelosi reauthorization plan continues to measure student and school success based primarily on standardized test scores, and fails to include multiple measures such as: (1) Attendance rates, (2) Graduation rates, (3) A rigorous curriculum, and (4) The number of students participating in honors or advanced placement courses.” This is where this article fits into my topic of standardized tests. The current focus on standardized testing is that teachers are supposed to teach to the test. “According to a recent study by the Center on Education Policy, a majority of the nation’s school districts report that while increasing time for test preparation, they have decreased class time for science, social studies, art, music and physical education.” And what’s really sad is that in elementary school, lunch periods have been cut short so that students are able to have more time to prepare for these standardized tests. I don’t even remember ever taking a standardized test in elementary school.

The idea of NCLB is to provide equal opportunities to schools around the nation. But “rather than providing assistance and resources to help all students and schools succeed, the Miller/Pelosi reauthorization proposal continues to punish lower-performing schools.” Another thing that shocked me was that they are trying to use this new proposal as a way to mandate how they should pay their teachers. “We know that test scores by themselves don’t fairly measure student achievement; they certainly will not be able to accurately evaluate a teacher’s effectiveness.”

“If Congressman Miller and Speaker Pelosi would just focus on these proven reforms, No Child Left Behind could become a positive force in helping our students and schools succeed. But as long as they insist on continuing the failed one-size-fits-all, federally mandated but not fully funded system that has been forced on us, we will have no choice but to stand together and urge our congressional representatives to vote no on all of the Miller/Pelosi reauthorization proposals.” This final statement pretty much sums up my opinion of this reauthorization idea. I believe that so far, the NCLB has helped many schools and students succeed, so why change it?

Resources: thereporter.com Full article here