World Education News

The need for objective measures of student achievement to assess the effectiveness of schools has crossed over from K-12 academic institutions into the realm of higher education. The number of college students being asked to take skills tests is growing with the results having an increasing impact on educational policy.

However, the results of the exams infrequently have any impact on the students themselves, and a new paper from the Educational Testing Service looks at whether that has a bearing on the relevance of the exam results. In other words, if the students don’t care about the outcomes of the exams, does that mean that the exams don’t serve as an accurate reflection of their knowledge?

So-called Parent Trigger Laws, which under certain circumstances allow parents to ‘take over’ a failing public school and determine its new path, are about to get more attention due to the nationwide opening of Won’t Back Down, a story of a parent whose daughter is continuously failed by the school system teaming with a teacher to bring change to their public school.

At the moment the story told in the movie is fiction in at least one important way. There hasn’t yet been a successful attempt by parents to take over a public school — but there might be soon. There is an ongoing attempt by a group of parents to make use of California’s parent trigger law to take control of an elementary school, and just like in the movie, the full might of the local education establishment has now arrayed against them.

An increasing number of schools are now beginning to administer standardized tests to students as early as kindergarten, Reuters reports.

And the trend shows no sign of reversing. A new exam meant to make sure that kids are on track to succeed in college or a career upon graduation from high school is on the way as well.

At least Paul Weeks, who in his capacity as the president of ACT Inc knows a thing or two about standardized tests, realizes that the idea of testing kindergarteners for career readiness might sound odd at the time when most aspire to be superheroes, since the exams the company is rolling out are unlikely to detect incipient x-ray vision skills. Yet, Weeks is very serious that the exam, which is meant to be administered yearly between the ages of 8 and 18 will serve as a good predictor of post-high school success, and which seeks to identify development in skills vital to that success such as critical thinking.

Fearing that the recent Chicago teachers strike might have eroded union support across the country, labor organizations are ponying up for an extensive publicity campaign to improve their image. The Washington Times is reporting that an umbrella group for many of the nation’s teachers unions, the American Federation of Teachers, will be holding community events in cities all over the U.S in the waning weeks of the 2012 election season.

Some speculate that this new push is an indication that far from being chastened by the events in Chicago, the unions are going on the offensive.