There would not appear to be a mandate to teach to / practice for the standardized tests from what Brian says. Of course, there is a mandate for students to take the test. So, "write off" the time associated with taking them but use the remainder of the time effectively! That means two things:

1. Teachers, use your education, experience, and the excellent personal / group professional development available today (YOU just need to identify what is needed and find it) to facilitate the effective learning of your students. Administrators, support your teachers the best way you can by encouraging them in their efforts.

2. To insure the teachers' efforts have the optimum impact, there needs to be efforts by motivated, engaged individuals in what I have been referring to as local Education Communities to identify the local issues, to understand them, and to find and implement the best alternatives (found better by every individual than the position each was championing at the start of the effort) through the suggestions of the late Stephen Covey in his last book.

Implementing both of these efforts - of course, they're not easy, nothing worthwhile ever is - gives what I believe is the best chance for achieving effective learning for all! Additional side benefits abound: the useless but mandated test scores will go up, the students' future opportunities will be optimized, AND the community life for all will improve! Finally, while this won't be cheap, I nevertheless believe it will provide the biggest bang for the buck and will NOT be as costly as business as usual!

Einstein's definition of insanity comes to mind: Doing the same things over and over and expecting different outcomes. Change is indeed required as it always is. I'm reminded of a Tom Brocow piece on NBC Olympics coverage last night on Roger Bannister: The times posted in the period right after his sub four-minute mile (believed impossible by many at the time) wouldn't even qualify for Olympic trials to go to the Olympics today! Change as in informed improvement is NOT an option. Otherwise, the undesirable change will be imposed!

Diane is on the money. Teachers and students need more freedom to choose what is being taught and how its being taught. Real learning happens when children are engaged in activities that capture their imaginations and encourage them to think and act creatively. The teacher's role is to provide his or hers with opportunities and to be their to help guide their students through the process. As far as assessments are concerned. There are many ways for a teacher to asses a students learning other than a "Test".

Reading the previous post, it looks like "someone" forgot to take their Prozac.

Hi Brian

I've been listening to the education wars for quit sometime now. All I need to say is that this war is happening for a reason.The Fascists, The Zoinists, The Illuminati's, the Republican Party in particular who represent these other powerful organizations who have controlled the modern world from the very beginning are the ones responsible for creating a system of struggle. These organizations do not want all of us to succeed. The system that is in place cultivates stress, pressure on students to weed them out one by one through ideas like standardized testing tactics. They don't want creativity in the classrooms because creativity creates Intelligence, expression and possible changes that would conflict with the power they hold over us. Its not about money, teachers, students, schools all the excuses we here about and they have us arguing about and waisting our energy over. They have us right where they want us. Education is controlled! Everyone knows we have the resources to make every child, student have a great education. Everyone knows we can create a more creative, outgoing classroom environment that the students enjoy and make them want to learn more and more. We in this nation have the power to provide a much better education for every single child. So then why don't we! Power, Control, Sustained Poverty making sure they keep us in debt. Debt is there ultimate power. This is never going to change with a vote. To change one of the many critical problems that we as nation and as a world face, We have to stop all of the distractions that have been placed before us including working everyday and take to the most massive protests and work strikes that the world has ever seen everyday so we can force significant change. Ask yourself this as well. Why do the majority of republican voters always vote republican? Because there not educated enough on a global scale. They are distracted by topics like gay right and abortion. Or they will tell you that they just like a particular candidate for a pitiful reason. They don't know the facts about whats going on. They keep voting for the same people that take there lives and families away from them. Make em slave more and more. So take a look at the really really big picture. We as a people are under severe attack and we need to wake the f**k up right now!!!

A very intelligent friend of mine, now in his 70s, spent time in a one-room school. Many ages & abilities were in the class. The teacher was just the orchestrator, and the students taught themselves & each other. Older and faster students taught those who had not learned that lesson yet. Teaching helps the learning process: watch one, then do one, then teach one.
He said it was the best educational experience he ever had.
But if the class is just going to be a teacher's lecture that's too fast for the slow, and too boring for the quick, then I'm skeptical of integrating differently-abled learners.

I am so happy to hear Dr. Diane Ravitch speak about the issue of charter schools and how the Ceos and hedge fund managers who are making the decisions for these schools should be creating their own schools rather than leeching off the larger school system. Most charter schools are not doing the job they are promising with children but are an opportunity for corporations to lline their own pockets at the expense of the children. How is it possible that this breaking the back of the unions and the school system might be benefitting our schools and our children?

Teachers need the support of parents at home to do their job for their children so when they come to school they are unencumbered with the many burdens of their families. When you have public schools doing the jobs of parents; feeding, guidance and protection, the job of teacher becomes greater than the subject they are expected to teach.
Learning in the 20th century too demands more than high stakes testing which is another opportunity for the testing companies to make money but doesn't assess a child's learning or understanding. Learning often occurs collaboratively, not responding to the "right" answer determined by these tests. Learning encourages many approaches to problems, it occurs when more questions emerge.

When anyone brings Rhee-style "reform" programs into the light, we see how ugly they are. Apparently, the fact that two of its figureheads are Rhee and George W. Bush aren't enough to make the inattentive public suspicious.

Follow these ideas and we get a system: pretending poverty doesn't exist, enriching publishers and testing companies, holding up elitist charters as models while they use public money to run private schools, giving huge public roles to un- and under-qualified demagogues like Rhee, undermining the kind of unionized labor rights essential to high performing school systems all over the world, giving public resources over to the control of meddling hedge fund managers and day tripping economists, and demoralizing current and future public educators, all while cynically invoking "the children." Quite a trick!

As for class size, what is the maximum number of students a teacher is assigned, where the result will be children who have mastered the coursework.

I remember the presidential debates in 2007, one was hosted by Bob Schieffer of CBS. He said that the US spends the most on education, yet the US was 29th in student competency.

Why despite spending the most on education, the US ranks so poorly?

As a student in a high school that placed special emphasis on successful standardized test results (the Regents exams and the AP exams), I can tell you that yes, I found it all very mindless. However, for those months in which all I did was drill, drill, drill, even imposing upon myself (once I understood it was a matter of learning a "Regents mindset") the taking and retaking of years and years of old Regents exams I found at used book stores, I understood that if I wasn't able to pass these stupid mindless tests, it meant I was failing in the one important thing I was supposed to be able to do by the time I graduated: show that I understood how a system works and produce what it expected of me.

Well, yesh, that wasn't very inspiring, and I (and my friends) used to joke that as soon as it was all over, our brains would "flush" all that crammed prep out of our minds, and we'd never be able to do geometry or remember certain things we'd memorized again, but we knew our futures counted on this crap. What good it did us, I'm not sure. Well, yes, I do know: I got into a good college, and had a grade point average that gave me possiblities other kids didn't have.

The thing is, I'm not sure what it gets kids other than that (the privileges that come with high grades). It sounds like a lot to someone who doesn't have those privileges, and who won't get into the college of their choice, but I can testify to a feeling of having lacked something during all my school years. What did I lack? I felt that I was lacking an education. I learned to read and write early, and my public school years were nothing but a treadmill. I thank god for the few great teachers I had along the way, for keeping me inspired, for keeping me from giving up. I went to France later in life, and in my thirties, got a college education there that blew my mind. But I have to say that I only did this because, as I said, ALL MY LIFE all I wanted was a good education, and I looked all over the place for it till I found it. Not everyone is raised to seek such things. I was raised to demand the best of my schools, through early teaching of reading and writing at home. That is a huge factor, I believe, in education overall. A love and thirst for knowledge. You can lead a horse to water, as they say... You can't get all these kids who are deadened and stultified since kindergarten to WANT that kind of education or even understand that they're lacking it.

Kid:
3. Informal
a. A child.
b. A young person.

Education continues in the home and community of the student.

If the home and community doesn't value education, doesn't value academic achievement, doesn't monitor whether the student studies, complete their homework, no school, no teacher will be able to graduate competent students.

Only my son's elementary school had a music program. That was because I live in a rich neighborhood and the PA raised the money. After that he got the opportunity to do some music in an after school program but it was pathetic. He also only had a certified librarian only in elementary school. Now he is in a high functioning public high school but no music and no certified librarian. His high level public junior high school didn't even have a library. They turn libraries into classrooms - they stuff the kids into these schools rather than creating more public schools. But they create charter schools and support them. What is going on here???!!!!!

See the works of John Taylor Gatto.
http://www.johntaylorgatto.com/

What can be learned from successful non-U.S. educational programs ?

Only my son's elementary school had a music program. That was because I live in a rich neighborhood and the PA raised the money. After that he got the opportunity to do some music in an after school program but it was pathetic. He also only had a certified librarian only in elementary school. Now he is in a high functioning public high school but no music and no certified librarian. His high level public junior high school didn't even have a library. They turn libraries into classrooms - they stuff the kids into these schools rather than creating more public schools. But they create charter schools and support them. What is going on here???!!!!!

Children need to be taught immediately that they are NOT the center of the universe, that they know almost nothing, and that they need to learn things to do things. This obsession with massaging the infantile egos of children is just obscene. And we wonder why so many of our children end up entitled morons.

i tuned in to listen to Ravitch--who is this woman taking over the show? Do her little magic on the outside? We're talking about public schools!

There is no time to do individual assessments with 32 kids in first grade classes.

Student centered things rather than subject centered things? God help us. CHILDREN ARE NOT INTELLECTUALLY FULLY FORMED ADULTS. THEY NEED TOOLS. TEACH THEM SOMETHING FOR CHRIST'S SAKE, AND STOP BLATHERING.

To Nick

I fully agree with you.

This woman is completely wrong. Rote memorization is ESSENTIAL....ESSENTIAL for the learning of basic spelling, arithmetic, writing.... Children have plenty of time to be "creative" later when they are given the tools to do that in the first place. These so-called educators are just projecting their own boredom with the essential slog work of education onto the children.

There are 32 kids in first grade classes with one teacher. It is impossible to be creative with 32 kids in first grade classes.

Get rid of standardized tests. Teachers and students should be creative. The money is going to the charter schools and money is being taken away from the public schools which forces the parents to apply to charter schools. Why not just improve the public schools and lower the classroom size.

Kids..kids...kids...kids...kids..I'm so royally sick of this word!

The word is CHILDREN, unless you've procreated with a goat. You wanna help "kids"? Start speaking proper English and steer them away from slovenly language. Educators and broadcasters are supposed to know better, so act like it.

Here in New Rochelle, 10% of the students are in "special categories" mental limist, ESL, emotional problems) There students use more than 25% of our school budget.

Chater schools cream-skim. Show me a charter school with the same more "special students" ratio as the school system.