Washington – Obama Calls For Limits On Testing To No More Than 2% Of Class Time

    11

    FILE - United States President Barack Obama speaks at the Democratic National Committee's Women's Leadership Forum's 22nd annual conference in Washington October 23, 2015. REUTERS/Gary Cameron Washington – Targeting 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.

    Join our WhatsApp group

    Subscribe to our Daily Roundup Email


    Students spend about 20 to 25 hours a school year taking standardized tests, according to a study of the nation’s 66 largest school districts that was released Saturday by the Council of Great City Schools. But it’s not known how much class time students spend preparing for tests that became mandatory, starting in third grade, under the George W. Bush-era No Child Left Behind law and are a flashpoint in the debate over the Common Core academic standards.

    “Learning is about so much more than just filling in the right bubble,” Obama said in a video released on Facebook. “So we’re going to work with states, school districts, teachers, and parents to make sure that we’re not obsessing about testing.”

    To drive the point home, Obama and Education Secretary Arne Duncan plan an Oval Office meeting Monday with teachers and school officials working to reduce testing time.

    In all, between pre-K and 12th grade, students take about 112 standardized exams, according to the council report. It said testing amounts to 2.3 percent of classroom time for the average 8th-grader.
    “How much constitutes too much time is really difficult to answer,” said Michael Casserly, the council’s executive director.

    Obama cannot force states or districts to limit testing, which has drawn consternation from parents and teachers. But Obama directed the Education Department to make it easier for states to satisfy federal testing mandates and he urged states and districts to use factors beyond testing to assess student performance.

    The Obama administration said it still supports standardized tests as a necessary assessment tool, and there are no signs they are going away soon.

    Both the House and Senate versions of an update to No Child Left Behind would preserve annual reading and math exams, although the House version would diminish their significance in determining whether schools are up to par. The legislation is in limbo while House and Senate negotiators figure out how to reconcile the competing versions.

    Administration officials said that in many cases, testing is redundant, poorly aligned with curriculum or simply overkill. They said the administration supports legislative proposals to cap testing time on a federal level, but wanted to offer states a model for how to cut down on testing absent congressional action.

    “There’s just a lot of testing going on, and it’s not always terribly useful,” Cecilia Munoz, the director of the White House’s Domestic Policy Council, said in an interview. “In the worst case, it can sap the joy and fun out of the classroom for students and for teachers.”

    Casserly said his group found examples of testing redundancy that could be cut to create more instructional time. For example, some states and school districts were requiring both end-of-year tests and end-of-course tests in the same subjects in the same grade.

    To ease the testing burden, the administration will provide states with guidance about how they can satisfy federal testing requirements in less time or in more creative ways, including federal waivers to No Child Left Behind that the Education Department readily has handed out. For example, some 8th-grade students who take high school-level coursework currently take both 8th-grade and high school assessments, but the administration will allow them to opt out of the 8th-grade tests.

    The value of standardized tests taps into the national debate about the federal government’s role in local schools; both political parties generally support scaling back Washington’s reach.

    Central to that debate is Common Core, a set of universal, college-ready academic standards in reading and math developed by state education officials. The federal government doesn’t require Common Core, but the administration has backed it with financial incentives. About 12 million students last spring took tests based on the curriculum.

    Teachers’ unions have fought hard against one-size-fits-all tests for students being tied to their teachers’ performance evaluations. Among parents with children in public schools, 63 percent were opposed to linking teacher evaluations to their students’ test scores in a recent Gallup Poll.

    Among other findings in the council report:

    —The most tests were required in 8th and 10th grade; the fewest were in pre-K, kindergarten and 1st grade.
    —Four in 10 districts report having to wait between two months and four months before getting state test results.
    —Some pockets of the country had substantial numbers of students opting out of standardized tests. But the overall opt-out rate was usually less than 1 percent.


    Listen to the VINnews podcast on:

    iTunes | Spotify | Google Podcasts | Stitcher | Podbean | Amazon

    Follow VINnews for Breaking News Updates


    Connect with VINnews

    Join our WhatsApp group


    11 Comments
    Most Voted
    Newest Oldest
    Inline Feedbacks
    View all comments
    8 years ago

    What a jerk. Once again he is soliciting to dumb America.

    8 years ago

    Cut out pre-holiday & graduation play practice for the younger grades and begin teaching for real.

    PureSatmar
    PureSatmar
    8 years ago

    Doesn’t it fit with his support for the ‘black lives matter’ movement?

    8 years ago

    Spoken like a true apologist for blacks’ lower scores….

    54321
    54321
    8 years ago

    What he really wants is that all school children should have the same affirmative action that got him through school and college. He admitted he took drugs through is college years yet he supposedly passed his grades (that he refuses to show everyone). Affirmative action here we come. Obama the devil.

    bsnow
    bsnow
    8 years ago

    Can’t get rid of this jerk fast enough.

    DanielBarbaz
    DanielBarbaz
    8 years ago

    I am so very tired of the government trying to stick their big noses in EVERYTHING. They can’t even do what they are supposed to do. Now they are educators too?!?!

    Let educators educate and let teachers teach.

    ayoyo
    ayoyo
    8 years ago

    So that his cousins will be able to pass the tests.

    8 years ago

    So because common core failed… And scores were so abysmal- lets just take fewer tests! Blame the tests since we can never blame the teachers (for failing to teach basic English and math), the students (for not paying attention), or the parents (for not doing homework). It has to be the tests’ fault!!!

    Shimon
    Shimon
    8 years ago

    …and have recess 90 pct of the day.

    leahle
    leahle
    8 years ago

    I am so tired of frum yidden who are functionally illiterate in the English language, don’t know math and science beyond an elementary school level, and who send their children to schools that frequently provide inadequate secular education, criticizing excellent proposals like this only because their Obama Derangement Syndrome prevents them from critical analysis. I come from a family of teachers and my daughter attends Jewish schools that have robust secular standards, including many of the standardized tests. I can tell you from experience that these tests are relatively useless, except to the testing preparation industry. Teachers and schools are rewarded for abandoning education in favor of test-taking skills and prep, students and families are stressed out, and many students develop feelings of inadequacy if they do not perform well on these tests. There is no nexus between standardized testing and the ability of a school to educate teachers.