The Freakonomics Blog (hosted by the New York Times) held a quorum on standardized testing and posted the contributions yesterday. The questions were:
Should there be less standardized testing in the current school system, or more? Should all schools, including colleges, institute exit exams?
Of the five responses, W. James Popham and Thomas Toch had the [...]

Education Sector has posted the text of a presentation1 delivered by co-founder and co-director Thomas Toch. In it, Toch gives a brief but helpful recap of recent educational policy struggles, defines three main areas of tension, and suggests the likely outcome of each:

National vs. local authority in school reform; verdict: national standards are inevitable
Low-performing [...]

TMAO brought my attention to these prepared remarks of California Democratic Congressman George Miller, chairman of the House Education and Labor Committee. TMAO quotes this line:
Even with all of these changes, we will not meet our national goal of closing the achievement gap until and unless we close the teacher quality gap.
While I strongly [...]

While I disagree with the way NCLB has been conceived and enforced, I agree with this approach from teachers to students:
We decided it was our duty to do everything we could to help our students beat this test—everything, that is, except give up powerful, purposeful instruction.
I’ve also found that an “outside enemy” (like a standardized [...]

Scott McCleod pointed to Richard F. Elmore’s UCEA conference presentation a few days ago and hosted the mp3 on his site. I gave it a listen. (His presentation is a bit dry, but substantive … and McCleod’s list of examples of misalignment are also helpful.) Elmore provides data and studies that [...]

A recent report from the Center on Education Policy suggests that students are improving on state reading and math tests. More than that:
the achievement gap between black and white students is shrinking in many states and … the pace of student gains increased after the law was enacted - Scores Up Since ‘No Child’ [...]

Marc Fisher’s article is appropriately biting, and as far as I’m concerned, he nails it.
He’s reporting Jack Dale’s refusal to administer standardized reading tests to recent immigrants. The standoff between Fairfax County and the federal government is creating a stir in the waters of the Potomac, and the stirring gives me hope that we [...]

Here in Virginia, Fairfax county has rejected the state’s standardized test (and hence NCLB) for immigrant children.
The Fairfax County School Board passed a resolution last month to defy the mandate, saying it is unfair to give such an exam to students just beginning to grasp the nuances of English. Fairfax Schools Could Lose Millions for [...]

From the CNN article “Commission urges tracking of teacher progress,” notes about a “special commission” involved in the revision of NCLB:
Teachers should be evaluated annually based on progress in the test scores of their students, the panel said. Reviews by colleagues or school principals also would be part of the equation for determining teacher quality.
My [...]

I’ve just started reading Roger Scruton’s An Intelligent Person’s Guide to Philosophy, so this isn’t a review. However, I was struck by this passage from the preface:
Philosophy is not the only subject that has been ’scientized’ by the modern university: literature has been shrunk to ‘literary theory,’ music has been colonized by set theory, [...]