Free Republic

The “test optional” movement has won its most high-profile convert in the University of Chicago, which announced last month that applicants to the school would no longer need to submit ACT or SAT scores. The University of Chicago has become known in recent years for its commitment to academic rigor and resistance to coddling and group think. But in this decision it has increased the momentum of a fashionable but damaging ideology overtaking elite education: That standardized metrics of any kind are discriminatory and elitist, and that each student is so special that he or she can only be evaluated...

Obama on Saturday called for limiting the amount of standardized educational testing to two percent of classroom time, addressing the growing concern across the county about an over emphasis on test taking. "Learning is about so much more than just filling in the right bubble," Obama said in a video released on Facebook. Obama and outgoing Education Secretary Arne Duncan plan an Oval Office meeting Monday with teachers and school officials who are working to reduce testing time. Obama’s efforts should be welcome news for teachers and their powerful and largely pro-Democrat unions that say educators’ performance evaluations shouldn’t be...

Addressing one of education’s most divisive issues, President Barack Obama on Saturday called for capping standardized testing at 2 percent of classroom time and said the government shares responsibility for turning tests into the be-all and end-all of American schools.

California schools posted standardized test scores Wednesday for the first time in two years, and the results were not stellar. Just one-third of the state’s public-school students were tested as proficient for their grade level in math and only 44 percent in English, state education officials said. Under the old test in 2013, 51 percent of students were proficient in math and 56 percent in English.

Editor's Note: This column was co-authored by Heidi Huber, founder of Operation Opt Out Ohio.Parents across the nation are in open revolt against the testing mania that has seized public schools under No Child Left Behind (NCLB) and the Common Core national standards. In some states, thousands of students — 200,000 in New York alone — are refusing the “mandatory” assessments. One would think the Washington politicos who are writing the NCLB reauthorization bill would take note of this widespread rebellion and would ease — or better still, eliminate — the federal testing requirements. But unlike the repentant thief who...

This is National School Choice Week, but I want to talk about parents' school testing choice. Moms and dads, you have the inherent right and responsibility to protect your children. You can choose to refuse the top-down Common Core racket of costly standardized tests of dubious academic value, reliability and validity. Don't let anyone tell you otherwise. I'm reminding you of your right to choose because the spring season of testing tyranny is about to hit the fan. Do you object to the time being taken away from your kids' classroom learning? Are you alarmed by the intrusive data-sharing and...

The National Education Association is highlighting October as “Bullying Prevention Month.” "I hope to never hear an educator or a parent or a Sunday school teacher say to a frightened bullied child, 'Just ignore it.' Schools that are seeing a decrease in bullying are not ignoring it. They are acting," NEA president Lily Eskelsen Garcia said, according to the NEA website. Kudos to the union for focusing on the problem, but it might be taken a little more seriously if its rhetoric didn’t ring so hollow. When it comes to public school governance, the NEA and its state and local...

Why are classrooms silent right before summer break arrives instead of buzzing with uplifting and educated conversation? The answer can usually be found taped to the closed classroom door: “Do not disturb. Test in progress.” standarized test For years, all across the nation, standardized tests have been administered to children and teenagers with hopes to measure and improve education. The endless variations of these tests and the myriad of acronyms invented to describe their purposes often leave students feeling uncertain as to why they are being tested, especially when in some cases, they won’t even see their scores. Tests can...

All politics is local. So Republican politicians with national ambitions better pay attention to what grassroots parents are saying and doing about the federal education racket known as Common Core. In bellwether Indiana this week, anti-Common Core activists won a pair of pivotal electoral victories against GOP Gov. Mike Pence. Pence's attempt to mollify critics by rebranding and repackaging shoddy Common Core standards is fooling no one. Tuesday's Republican primary elections in the Hoosier state resulted in the landslide defeat of two establishment incumbents running for statewide re-election. Pence had endorsed GOP State Rep. Kathy Heuer over challenger Christopher Judy....

Common Core State Standards could be the under-the-radar issue of the 2014 campaign. Business leaders and politicians had their hearts in the right place. We are a highly mobile society. People are likely to move more than once for jobs. Often they move their whole families to new school districts. Sometimes families move across the country. Children, particularly children whose parents are in the military, are prone to be disadvantaged in education if they move around. A school in one part of the country may be ahead of, behind or on altogether different subjects than a former school is. Because...

They're everywhere. Turn on Fox News, local news, Animal Planet, HGTV, The Family Channel or talk radio. Pro-Common Core commercials have been airing ad nauseam in a desperate attempt to persuade American families to support the beleaguered federal education standards/testing/technology racket. Who's funding these public relations pushes? D.C. lobbyists, entrenched politicians and Big Business interests. The foundational myth of Common Core is that it's a "state-led" initiative with grassroots support that was crafted by local educators for the good of all of our children. But the cash and power behind the new ad campaign tell you all you need to...

Almost two decades ago, heartbroken and single, I wrote out a list that described the man of my dreams. Less than two years later, my husband and I married, proving that dreams do indeed come true (yes, he met and even exceeded all criterion). As a child, I spent hours staring up into the sky, watching the clouds, dreaming of what might be one day. As I grew older, I became more grounded in reality -- the reality of college, graduate school, working and children. As my husband and I have watched our children (now 12 and 14) grow, the...

A fortnight ago, my column focused on how Philadelphia's schoolteachers have joined public-school teachers in cities such as Atlanta, Detroit, Los Angeles, Columbus, New York and Washington in changing student scores on academic achievement tests. Teachers have held grade fixing parties, sometimes wearing rubber gloves to hide fingerprints. In some cases, poorly performing students were excused from taking exams to prevent them from dragging down averages. As a result of investigations, a number of schoolteachers and administrators have been suspended, fired or indicted by states attorneys general. Most of these cheating scandals have occurred in predominantly black schools across the...

We shall continue with our Common Core standardized exam, provided by the testing consortium Smarter Balanced. Recall that this is an eleventh-grade English Language Arts examination. Much Ado About Much Ado About Nothing It was the first day back at school after the holiday break. Our drama teacher, Mrs. Kent, handed out our next assignment: an in-depth study of a scene from one of Shakespeare’s plays. I was so excited to see that I had been assigned a scene from Much Ado About Nothing. Finally, here was my long-awaited opportunity to act out a comedy scene from Shakespeare! My joy...

Let’s put the Common Core to the test. Specifically, let’s look at a pilot standardized examination created by Smarter Balanced, one of the two testing consortia formed to create exams aligned to the Common Core, the educational regimen that prevails in forty-five states in the nation. We shall leave aside the questions of why everyone has been so quiet about what these tests will look like and whether states outsourcing testing to unaccountable agencies that will in turn dictate the curricula of the schools constitutes a gross violation of the principle of local control. For now we shall simply try...

Nearly two years ago, U.S. News & World Report came out with a story titled "Educators Implicated in Atlanta Cheating Scandal." It reported that "for 10 years, hundreds of Atlanta public school teachers and principals changed answers on state tests in one of the largest cheating scandals in U.S. history." More than three-quarters of the 56 Atlanta schools investigated had cheated on the National Assessment of Educational Progress test, sometimes called the national report card. Cheating orders came from school administrators and included brazen acts such as teachers reading answers aloud during the test and erasing incorrect answers. One...

When American Federation of Teachers President Rhonda “Randi” Weingarten proposed a “bar exam” of sorts for teacher prospects, it was hailed as a step forward in improving teacher quality, EAGnews.org reported. But some of Weingarten’s underlings don’t know what all the fuss is about. She either didn’t run the idea past her deputies, or they didn’t approve and she trotted it out anyway. Norwalk Federation of Teachers President Bruce Mellion said if teachers would be subjected to such a test, they better get a pay raise. "What we're doing is testing, testing, testing, testing. At some point we need to...

JoAnn Watson, Detroit city council member, said, "Our people in an overwhelming way supported the re-election of this president, and there ought to be a quid pro quo." In other words, President Obama should send the nearly bankrupted city of Detroit millions in taxpayer bailout money. But there's a painful lesson to be learned from decades of political hustling and counsel by intellectuals and urban experts. In 1960, Detroit's population was 1.6 million. Blacks were 29 percent, and whites were 70 percent. Today, Detroit's population has fallen precipitously to 707,000, of which blacks are 84 percent and whites 8 percent....

Standardized tests in English and math taken by students in New York State are about to become slightly less tricky. Beginning next spring, a new company, Pearson, will write the standardized tests that the Education Department gives to nearly all third through eighth graders. The department switched to Pearson this year after its contract with another company, CTB/McGraw-Hill, expired. The department has advised the new company that catch-all answer choices known for tripping up students, like “none of the above” and “all of the above” and already rare in the state’s tests, are now banned. Mirroring a national trend toward...

Hey Teachers … Leave Them Kids Alone! Thursday, July 07, 2011 – by Staff Report America's biggest teacher and principal cheating scandal unfolds in Atlanta ... At least 178 teachers and principals in Atlanta Public Schools cheated to raise student scores on high-stakes standardized tests, according to a report from the Georgia Bureau of Investigation. Award-winning gains by Atlanta students were based on widespread cheating by 178 named teachers and principals, said Georgia Gov. Nathan Deal on Tuesday. His office released a report from the Georgia Bureau of Investigation that names 178 teachers and principals – 82 of whom confessed...