The news that didn't fit from Oct 21st!

► In FIVE ASSESSMENT MYTHS AND THEIR CONSEQUENCES - a commentary in EdWeek, Rick Stiggins gives us a list of five myths about standardized testing. Webster's Online says a myth is "a person or thing having only an imaginary or unverifiable existence" - hardly the bedrock for scientific assessment.

• Myth 1: THE PATH TO SCHOOL IMPROVEMENT IS PAVED WITH STANDARDIZED TESTS.

• Myth 2: SCHOOL AND COMMUNITY LEADERS KNOW HOW TO USE ASSESSMENT TO IMPROVE SCHOOLS.

• Myth 3: TEACHERS ARE TRAINED TO ASSESS PRODUCTIVELY.

• Myth 4: ADULT DECISIONS DRIVE SCHOOL EFFECTIVENESS.

• Myth 5: GRADES AND TEST SCORES MAXIMIZE STUDENT MOTIVATION AND LEARNING.

Rick Stiggins is the founder of the Educational Testing Service's Assessment Training Institute, in Portland, Ore. - Stiggins is the father of Tests if not of Testing and a Trainer of Testers - he knows of which he speaks.

He concludes: Sound assessment is not something to be practiced once a year. As we look to the future, we must balance annual, interim or benchmark, and classroom assessment. Only then will we meet the critically important information needs of all instructional decisionmakers.

Of greatest importance, however, is that we acknowledge the key role of the learner in the assessment-learning connection. We must begin to use classroom assessment to help all students experience continuous success and come to believe in themselves as learners.

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► PERFORMANCE TEST FOR NEW CALIFORNIA TEACHERS APPROVED

By Vaishali Honawar | Edcation Week

California has given the nod to a rigorous assessment created by teacher colleges that requires aspiring educators to show students are learning before they earn their preliminary licenses.

Starting next school year, all teacher-candidates will have to pass a performance assessment before they can get their teaching credentials. A state law passed in 1998 requires such evaluations take place, but a lack of state funding delayed implementation.

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► NOT WHO BUT WHAT IS LEFT BEHIND

By Barbara M. Stock/Ed Week

Our national obsession with standardized-test scores is dangerous. The idea that there is only One Right Answer, the answer to the test question, plants the seeds of authoritarian rule. Standardized tests encourage a standardized way of thinking. If there is only one right answer, there is no need to think, to question, to discuss. We breed compliance and complacency. We see challenges to authority as disloyal. The foundations of democracy break down. I was shocked into this realization when my grandson phoned with a homework question. “What did you learn in school that helps you be a good citizen?” he asked. His question stopped me. A good citizen?

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► BUSH SAYS HE WOULD VETO AN UNACCEPTABLE NCLB RENEWAL BILL

By David J. Hoff/Ed Week

As Congress works toward reauthorizing the No Child Left Behind Act, President Bush has said for the first time that he’s willing to reject any bill he doesn’t like. “Any effort to weaken No Child Left Behind Act will get a presidential veto,” Mr. Bush said on Oct. 15 at a town-hall-style meeting in Rogers, Ark. “I believe this piece of legislation is important, and I believe it’s hopeful, and I believe it’s necessary to make sure we got a [sic] educated group of students who can compete in the global economy when they get older.” The next day, Senate aides distributed draft language of large sections of a potential NCLB bill, the first such specific reauthorization language put forth by key lawmakers in that chamber.

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► CALIFORNIA OFFERS LONG-TERM HELP ON EXIT EXAMS

By Linda Jacobson/Ed Week

As soon as they apply for it, California school districts will be eligible to receive a share of more than $70 million for supplemental instruction and counseling services targeting students who have reached the end of senior year without passing the state’s high school exit exam, under legislation signed this month by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger. The measure allowing students to receive up to two years of extra help beyond the 12th grade year brings to an end a lawsuit against the state, Valenzuela v. O’Connell, filed by students who had repeatedly failed the test, but had met other graduation requirements. ("California Seniors Sue Over High School Exam," Feb. 15, 2006.) In addition, the Republican governor included more than $188 million in the current fiscal year’s budget for summer and after-school programs to help students prepare for the mandated test.

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► VOCATIONAL EDUCATION PROSPERS UNDER GOV. SCHWARZENEGGER

Editorial/Argus

WHATEVER ELSE he accomplishes, or fails to accomplish, during his topsy-turvy governorship, Arnold Schwarzenegger has served two interrelated and worthy causes very well — raising the standing of community colleges and bringing vocational training out of the educational attic. Schwarzenegger went through such training as a salesman when he was a high school student in Austria and later attended Santa Monica Community College. High school-level voc-ed, as it used to be known before being renamed "career technical education," and community colleges have been given short shrift by politicians, the education establishment and other policymakers in recent decades.

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► ACHIEVEMENT BY DESIGN

American School

A few years ago, a fourth-grade teacher in central Maine brought photographs of her classroom to our graduate research course. She’d recorded rainwater seeping through the ceiling and dripping into plastic buckets, and she’d taken close-up pictures of bare wires, broken electrical sockets, cracked tiles, and exposed insulation. I decided to see the school for myself, so I arranged a walk-through with the teacher and principal. They pointed out structural problems and health hazards throughout the school. And they introduced me to teachers who managed to teach and students who struggled to learn in those appalling conditions. A third-grade teacher and her students, suffering from burning, watering eyes, had evacuated to a makeshift classroom in a corridor.

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► FIVE MEN, FIVE DIFFERENT VIEWS ON EDUCATING BLACK MALES

By Cassie M. Chew/Diverse Online

Black males are discovering that they don’t need to ‘hit the books’ in order to make a living, and this is the reason behind recent statistics that report that as many as half of them drop out of high school and don’t pursue a college education. “There was a time when we were always taught that education was for us to get a good job, buy a house, raise a family — education doesn’t play the necessary role in those things any longer to young Black men,” according to poet, writer and filmmaker Malik Salaam.

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► REDUCING CLASS SIZE MAY BE MORE COST-EFFECTIVE THAN MOST MEDICAL INTERVENTIONS

Science Daily

Reducing the number of students per classroom in U.S. primary schools may be more cost-effective than most public health and medical interventions, according to a study by researchers at Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health and the Virginia Commonwealth University.The study indicates that class-size reductions would generate more quality-adjusted life-year gains per dollar invested than the majority of medical interventions. The findings will be published in the November issue of the American Journal of Public Health.