Comments on: AIMS test appears doomed; could new reforms be on the horizon?

By: Mark

Mark — Thu, 21 Aug 2008 05:08:27 +0000

Jake you couldn’t have said it any better! Determining whether a student has made yearly progress on a 4 day yearly test is absurd. Imagine your job evaluation being determined by your production on 4 days out of the year. Not too many people would remain employed. The biggest critics seem to be the ones furthest from the trenches. A true teacher holds themselves accountable for the success of their students daily. They do not need a faceless department telling them they have failed, because little Jimmy had a rough 4 days. The Department of Education needs a wake up call and a complete overhaul. I’d prefer my kid learning to read and write better in 4th grade rather than understanding how a closed circuit works. Things would make much more sense if the people making these educational reforms actually understood what a day in the trenches looked like.

By: Jake

Jake — Sat, 02 Aug 2008 00:23:08 +0000

OK, let’s bring this discussion down to basics. Kids should learn to read by the end of third grade. Give them a Reading test at the end of third grade. If they don’t pass, retain them in third grade until they do.
Next, kids should learn to add, subtract, multiply and divide by the end of sixth grade. Give them a Math test at the end of sixth grade. If they don’t pass it, retain them in sixth grade until they do.
Then, kids should learn how to write a good sentence by the time they finish eighth grade. Give them a Writing test at the end of eighth grade. If they don’t pass it, retain them in eighth grade until they do.
I’m sick to death of hearing about all this testing rhetoric. What possible good is it doing to test these kids constantly year in and year out? The kids are in school to learn how to learn. That’s right, LEARN HOW TO LEARN. In other words, none of us, parents, teachers, clergy or public servants have the time or ability to teach kids all that they’ll need to know to survive in the modern world. What we can teach them is how to FIND OUT what they need to know, when they need to know it. The only thing the kids these days are learning in school is how to take the darn test. That’s not education, that’s conditioning.
It’s time the Dept. of Education and the Legislature woke up to the fact that these Standarized Tests are hurting kids more than helping. It’s time we got back to teaching our kids how to learn, rather than training them how to pass some erroneous test dreamed up by a committee of politicians and text book publishers to further their own agenda.

By: Dave

Dave — Fri, 01 Aug 2008 21:37:55 +0000

Notice the mistakes in my 1st response. It would appear that I didn’t learn how to proof-read.

By: Dave

Dave — Fri, 01 Aug 2008 21:36:13 +0000

Whatever happened to having specific requiements to pass each grade and progress? If a student cannot complete the requirements for a grade, they stay there until they can. I realizr this may be damaging to their delicate psyche but it will insure that when they do finish school, they will have received an education. I have noticed, in several “Vents, Letters to the Editor, and many articles in the Trib, that many folks did not learn proper punctuation or grammar in school. Apparantly they they didn’t learn the differance between many sond-alike words either. Perhaps some of our adults should go to a refresher school for spellin, grammar, and punctuation usage.

By: Saundra

Saundra — Thu, 17 Jul 2008 00:23:49 +0000

Having been educated on the eastern coast of our great nation, it was the rule that every one was tested in each grade to determine if the student was to progress on to the next grade. It was a surprise to me to find that Arizona does not have this unit of measurment in place. Arizona believes it’s students should progress on whatever the student believes it has learned. Arizona does not find out that the student has in fact learned absolutely nothing at graduation time and then it wants to withhold the students progress. It is the schools responsibility to ensure that a third grader has learned ALL of the third grade concepts. Call me old fashioned but what happened to “learning to read in kindergarten?”

By: Hazel

Hazel — Wed, 16 Jul 2008 14:28:10 +0000

Thank you. I read the earlier article that mentioned using the SAT (or ACT) as the high school test. As a teacher, I like that idea a lot. It does more to promote the idea that high school is not the end, and that it is a test that is not specific to our state. A state specific test does very little, and although I don’t like the idea of comparing students to each other to rank schools, this is a step closer the right direction. I would much rather see schools judged based on the progress of the individual students. I have seen a few charter schools use tests given at the begining, middle and end of the year to see how much growth students have made. Regular students are expected to make 1 year’s growth, gifted at least 1.5, and special education students are expected to make progress according to their IEP. I am also glad to see that I am not the only one who has suggested that we use the test at the elementary level to make sure that all students can read before they go into the upper grades. I don’t think many people realize how huge the difference is between 3rd grade and 4th grade. Up until the end of third grade, students are learning how to read (not just sound out words, but comprehend and make meaning out of the words) and starting in 4th grade they are reading and writing to learn. I hope that Arizona will wake up and take these research based suggestions to heart…and mind.