Tennessee students' scores plunge as standards changed.

[madfloridian]

What are we doing to our students in the name of false "accountability"? These are the scores that affect promotion of students, teacher and principal hiring and firing, and grades for the schools themselves.

Where's the accountability for our Democratic leaders who are pushing these reforms with no proof that they work.

Failure rate tops 50% on tougher standards

More than half the students in Tennessee public schools failed state tests last spring based on new proficiency standards. Gov. Phil Bredesen warned state residents last week that the results would not be pretty.

Friday, the State Board of Education passed new "cut" scores for the state tests, retooled last year to match more rigorous curriculum and standards the state began adopting in 2007.

Based on the new scores, more than 52 percent of third-graders flunked math in the just-finished school year. And the news gets worse with each grade. In grade six, for instance, nearly 70 percent flunked math; in grade eight, 75 percent failed. Reading in most grades was slightly better, with the failure rate at 52 percent for fifth-graders and moving up to 57 percent for eighth-graders.

And why did this happen?

Assistant state commissioner of education Bruce Opie compares the new standards to moving the goalposts for a field-goal kicker.

"Last year, the kicker got 10 field goals. He only got three this year. He is still as good a kicker, but we set the bar back," he said.

Oh, really? And do you think that student will understand that though he is being called a failure that he really is not...he's just as good as he was last year? Really?

I blame parents and teachers who are allowing this administration to push through these reforms. They are hurting our children, and no one seems to care.

Howard Dean opposed these artificial standards, and he said this about NCLB in 2003. Looks like what he said about 2013 is going to happen.

Every school in America will be a failing school by 2013

MANCHESTER, N.H. (AP) Democratic presidential hopeful Howard Dean on Sunday urged states to reject federal No Child Left Behind funding, and said he would if still governor of Vermont.

''It's going to cost them more in property taxes and other taxes than they are going to get out of it,'' Dean told The Associated Press following a campaign stop.

Earlier in the day, he told a crowd of teachers and supporters at Merrimack High School that ''Vermont would have been the first state to turn down that money'' if he still was governor.

Dean criticized President Bush, saying his administration will lower the standards for good schools in New Hampshire, making them more like poorly performing schools in Texas. The Bush administration believes "the way to help New Hampshire is to make it more like Texas," Dean told supporters in Manchester, adding that "every school in America by 2013 will be a failing school."

..."Yesterday, he called the law an "intrusive mandate" and said Democratic candidates who voted for it were "co-opted" by Bush's agenda, which Dean says aims to "put public schools out of business.

Obama's new revised NCLB may be called Race to the Top, but it is targeting public education.

Here is more from Schools Matters on the Tennessee test standards.

Children, Parents, and Teachers Pushed to the Bottom in "Race to the Top"

So the new mass failure, thank goodness, doesn’t have anything to do with all the video games or hours of TV watching that filled students’ time this summer. For the majority of children to become failures overnight, it took coordination from a set of policy recommendations by Achieve, Inc. (the education arm of the U. S. Chamber of Commerce’s Business Roundtable), a lame duck governor, Phil Bredesen, who sits as Co-Chair of Achieve, Inc., and a Tennessee State Board of Education willing to toe the line of the corporate education reformers who now run the U. S. Department of Education, which paid out $500 million to Tennessee last spring in the Race to the Top. In short, it is time for Tennessee school children, parents, and teachers to suffer the consequences of Tennessee’s acceptance of the RTTT money and corporate governance of schools.

To repeat that last sentence....

It is time for Tennessee school children, parents, and teachers to suffer the consequences of Tennessee’s acceptance of the RTTT money and corporate governance of schools.

Jim Horn then turns to who in the world would want to make these changes that cause such mass failures of kids?

Well, think about it. Whose interests are served in expanding failure on a grand scale? Could it be the charter school CEOs of the CMOs and the EMOs will have years more of school turnaround opportunities? Will lower scores benefit the corporate enemies of the teaching profession like Gates and Broad and the Business Roundtable, especially since job security and pay in Tennessee, thanks to the RTTT deal, are now to be determined significantly by test scores? Will standardized testing remain the reason we have schools for another generation of children who, meanwhile, become less capable of thinking as a result? Will the general public remain distracted by the continuing "failure" of schools while the oligarchy continues to ship our jobs and wealth abroad? As Bracey notes at the end of a 2007 op-ed at WaPo, “A Test Everyone Will Fail,”

"If the fear-mongers can scare you sufficiently (how many times have you heard the phrase "failing schools" in the past five years?), you might permit them to do to your public schools things you would otherwise never allow."

Well-said, Gerald Bracey, well-said. May you rest in peace.

What you warned about is happening faster. For want of money all are permitting them to do things to our schools which we at one time would never have allowed.

Now Tennessee joins New York City as they declare more and more of their students, teachers, and schools to be failures.