Big news in the rebellion against standardized testing-dominated education: California is
taking a break from relying mostly on standardized test scores to evaluate schools.
The State Board of Education unanimously voted to suspend for a year the Academic Performance Index, which is based on standardized test scores and widely used to evaluate a school's performance in boosting academic achievement. Since the state is rolling out new tests this year, board members said they wanted at least two years of results to judge school progress.
Amid a national backlash against the overuse of test scores, board members also voted to shift from a school quality measure based solely on exam results to one that would include other factors. Possible additions include student attendance, dropout rates, suspensions, English proficiency, access to educational materials and performance in college-level classes.
It's a damn good thing, too, when you consider that, as the
Los Angeles Times reports, "In a dry run of 775 schools this month, one-third were unable to connect to the state testing website."
Diane Ravitch highlights one of the glaring flaws in the idea that these tests are supposed to give feedback that will improve education:
Will California officials be surprised to learn that they cannot see the item analysis, they can see only the scores. Exactly how can they improve student performance when the tests provide no diagnostic information for any individual student?
Continue reading below the fold for more of the week's education and labor news.
A fair day's wage
- Faith v. greed: The battle between faith-based organizations and the payday loan industry.
- Elizabeth Stoker Bruenig details some of what David Brooks doesn't understand about poverty.
- Mike Konczal asks why are liberals resigned to low wages?
Liberal nihilists try to explain why the economy isn’t serving workers, but they do so in ways that render us powerless to fix the problem. [...]
These stories blame an impersonal market and individual failures for the stagnation of wages, but they don’t fully explain the thirty-five-year decline. For example, we don’t see the gains that would be expected if robots were really replacing workers. (Indeed, low pay for workers is a likely reason many businesses don’t even bother trying to upgrade their equipment.) The economy isn’t even working anymore for highly skilled workers, with many well-educated people seeing stagnant pay or being forced to take low-skill jobs.
But while these explanations are incorrect, that isn’t what makes them nihilistic. The nihilism rests in the fact that these stories are palliatives meant to relieve the anxiety of facing a massive political problem. They describe the collapse in wage growth not as a site of collective political struggle but instead as a story where no one—especially policy-makers—is responsible.
- Workers Independent News week in review:
- Striking oil workers and Shell have reached a tentative deal:
The proposed deal includes annual wage increases and maintains the cost-sharing ratio of the union’s current health-care plan, the United Steelworkers said in a statement on Thursday. It also contains language addressing the USW’s concerns about worker fatigue and contractors performing routine maintenance at oil refineries.
The accord could end a strike at U.S. plants that began on Feb. 1 and has since spread to sites that account for almost 20 percent of the country’s total refining capacity.
- Eight things you need to know about that Gallup poll on trade.
- Productivity's price at Volkswagen in Tennessee:
Amanda says her floor supervisor, a former Toyota group leader, publicly humiliated her until she finally broke down. “One day while he was yelling at me, I told him that I am going to kill myself if you keep talking to me like this. He sent me to the medical bay. The medical bay put me on short-term disability.
“I saw a therapist who said I was fine as long as I was moved to another line. The Volkswagen doctor refused to clear me.” Amanda never returned to work at VW, believing it easier to find another job than to fight the company.
- Michele Bachmann in Sharknado 3 brought to you by Strikenado scabs.
- Oh, hey, look. A second NFL team is paying its cheerleaders a settlement after being sued for not paying them the minimum wage.
- Papa John's forced to pay millions in workers' stolen wages
- It's time to take back "moral" language from the right: New York adopts Moral Mondays from North Carolina.
- As the nation commemorates Selma march, auto parts workers there fight for their health.
Education