It’s a fraud. That’s what Wake Superior Court Judge Howard Manning called (See Under the Dome) the Department of Public Instruction’s (DPI) practice of not labelling schools where up to sixty percent of the students fail standardized tests as “low performing”, simply because of year-to-year improvements in student performance (For additional information on DPI Testing click, here.)
Manning, who has presided over the Leandro decision and subsequently related cases calls DPI’s actions, “an educational escape from reality.” Judge Manning is finding out what many have known for years: education testing in North Carolina needs an overhaul. No matter how you slice it, academic growth is never a substitute for achievement or mastery of content. The sooner North Carolina dispels with this delusion, the better off all our students will be.
I agree with overhauling the testing. What does a 3 or 4 mean on the EOC/EOG’s mean in reality? It means nothing. That number cannot prove that a child will succeed or fail in life, that takes common sense, which the children are not being taught to use. Anyone in the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools, should know, it’s not based on numbers, it’s based on the basics in education, because everything has a foundation that you build on.