Why Poor Schools Can’t Win at Standardized Testing – The Atlantic.

Arne Duncan is a fool with zero knowledge of how to evaluate or improve schools.

It truly, truly pisses me off that this administration has wasted a chance to improve public education in this country. In fact, all of their efforts are setting things back for years. And not to ignore a huge unspoken issue here, unless their is an abrupt turn-around, the Obama administration is solidifying an economic (and often racially based) caste system in this country for generation to come.

“…Standardized tests are not based on general knowledge. As I learned in the course of my investigation, they are based on specific knowledge contained in specific sets of books: the textbooks created by the test makers.”

…We tend to think of data as immutable truth. But we forget that data and data-collection systems are created by people. Flesh-and-blood humans need to count the books in a school and enter the numbers into a database. Usually, these humans are administrative assistants or teacher’s aides. But severe state funding cuts over the past several years have meant cutbacks in the school district’s administrative staff. Even the best data-collection system is useless if there are no people available to manage it.

…It may be many years until Philadelphia’s education budget matches its curriculum requirements. In the meantime, there are a few things the district—and other flailing school districts in America—can do. Stop giving standardized tests that are inextricably tied to specific sets of books. At the very least, stop using test scores to evaluate teacher performance without providing the items each teacher needs to do his or her job. Most of all, avoid basing an entire education system on materials so costly that big, urban districts can’t afford to buy them. Until these things change, it will be impossible to raise standardized test scores—despite the best efforts of the teachers and students who will return to school this fall and find no new books waiting for them.”