<p>Chairman Charles Miller said "he saw a developing consensus over the need for more accountability in higher education." </p>
<p>Now, as I understand the word consensus it means an opinion that is generally held by all. So what is a "developing consensus," besides being an oxymoron? Orwellian newspeak? It can mean the opposite of what it implies, i.e., it could be an opinion held by only a small group, like Chuckie, also known back in Texas as Charles "1-2-3 testing," and a few of his friends at his right wing propaganda tank, the National Center for Policy Analysis. In other words all this right-minded republican, who began donating lots to W's campaigns going back to when W became a governor, has said is: "Some of us republicans think this a good idea and, while we got the hammer, let's do it." Also, I am so glad he is joined in his views by another commission member, Jonathan Grayer, the CEO of Kaplan, the producer of study aids for standardized tests -- perhaps just a wee bit self-interest there. This commission is stacked with persons who will come out the "right way," despite having a token minority of professors and others who might not be so enamored with the idea. The final report will likely quote W condemning abortion and stem cell research in institutions of higher education and granting him the power to eavesdrop on inter-student e-mail (oops, I forgot, he already has that power). Geesh, I am just getting so tired of being told by this administration that it believes in personal freedoms, state's rights, and less federal government control and then seeing it do the opposite continuously.</p>
<p>I know how to nip this in the bud. Make the President, Veep, Cabinet members, Senators and Representatives take the test and then publish the results. Anyone who fails would, of course, have to resign immediately.</p>
<p>I agree with Teach 2005 regarding instructional focus. In addition to burning kids out with test after test, important time is taken from other learning opportunities. </p>
<p>Our schools used to encourage kids to participate in valuable extracurriculars like DI and National History Day, but no more. Administration doesn't want student focus anywhere but on 'the test', and they discourage teachers and kids from getting involved in these other activities. If kids do want to participate, they are on their own. Fortunately, in our area, we have parents willing to step in and mentor and guide students in the alternative learning activities. But I'll bet the same is not true in less affluent areas where all parents must work, where resources are minimal or where there a barriers such as language and income.</p>
<p>Frankly, I think if we want our kids to learn well, they must be taught well. And if the teaching profession could earn a decent wage, the best and the brightest would be attracted to the profession. Right now, it seems as though we are dependent on altruism of the highly qualified who are willing to sacrifice material comfort because they love to teach and they care about society. Unfortunately, altruism is in ever increasingly short supply these days.</p>
<p>[Mudder - I don't even know where to begin with our moronic state legislature....but our parents are to blame too. If they could get their heads outta their (bleeps) and quit worrying about who has the best football stadium or the biggest swimming pool, they might look up and notice what a mess our educational system is in this state. Books and teachers are all that matter, the rest is just blather.]</p>
<p>Good God no. Please, sweet God of mercy, no. If I have to go through 4 more year sof idiotic testing, I think I'll strangle someone.</p>
<p>BTW, have any of the standardized tests implemented by the federal government been proven to accomplish anything useful? Because all it does in my city is stress students and teachers and force students to cram useless information for a few months.</p>
<p>I don't know how to break it to you folks but for anyway planing on going to graduate school, law school, medical school, or busnisness school for an MBA you are in for a lot more high stakes testing than you faced getting into your undergraduate program and it has nothing to do with any federal requirements. And when you finish law school, medical, dental, or vertinary school, you graduate program etc you are going to be in form some more even higher stakes testing - law boards, medical boards, dissertation defense etc.</p>
<p>I think testing for professional licensing is not the issue at hand Cato. Senseless gov't testing which essential duplicates coursework assessment throughout the undergraduate years is the issue.</p>
<p>Sheesh whats wrong with testing? Its an objective standard and should be required! What other criteria can you judge a person by? His passion? Committment? Potential? ???</p>
<p>P.S. - please don't mention geniuses who were bad at testing- Einstein, whoever.. they are anomalies, not the rule.</p>
<p>I believe the testing being proposed is not intended to measure individual graduates but rather the performance of individual colleges. If the government is going to expend large sums of money on student loans and by subsidizing those loans encourage individual citizens to take on a lot of debt doesn't it have a responsibility to see that the institutions getting the money are actually performing a worthwhile service?</p>
<p>If we tell kids that education is way to get ahead in the world and then encourage them to take out tens of thousands of dollars in loans for that eduacation don't we have a responsibility to see that they are not in effect cheated out of the benefits of higher education? I really feel that some people are so blinded by political partisanship that they cannot think clearly. It is fine to hate the current administration but sheesh folks even a blin squirrel can find a nut once in a while.</p>
<p>Cato, the accredidation process is what ensures that colleges and universities are meeting their responsibilities. That process is much more useful because the accrediation boards look at the curriculum in various programs rather than making sweeping tests. Moreover, these people are trained professionals rather than politicans and are vastly more qualified to measure academic programs. Some of the examples you provided, ie dissertation exams, aptly demonstrate this. For qualifying exams for a PhD, the exams is composed by individual professors in the department that are experts in the area. The accountability comes from other colleges and universities-if the program produces poor quality PhD recipients, they will not hire them.</p>
<p>"If the government is going to expend large sums of money on student loans and by subsidizing those loans encourage individual citizens to take on a lot of debt doesn't it have a responsibility to see that the institutions getting the money are actually performing a worthwhile service?"</p>
<p>This "we provide some government programs therefore we get to control everything" has become this administration's dirty mantra to justify its elimination of academic freedom,sticking its 1984 nose into controlling more and more individual rights and state institutions, and imposing more and more costs on the states and institutions of the states. They pass these testing requirements but then do not provide the states or the schools funding to pay for them. Where do you think cash strapped states and state colleges are going to get the money to pay for this? The usual place by raising tuition or fees. Other than some anecdotal stories about an occassional college student who doesn't have the basics where is the evidence to prove that college students as a whole are all being so poorly educated that the fed gov has to step in and impose testing. That there are some such students is a truism that has existed since colleges have existed but does that mean we are now supposed to let the fed gov control it? Parents on this board come forth -- are all your college student kids being turned into idiots at college? This is typical Bush administration tactics. Declare there is a major problem without real evidence to prove it so you can take control of something the US government has never controlled before, or, in the case of Iraq, declare war. If there are colleges that are failing their job, that is something to be addressed in the accreditation process or for state universities at the state level.</p>
<p>In a former life I worked with an agency that provided effective developmental instruction for those whose basic skills were not were they should be. I was approached by a group working with a local teachers union. It seems that the school board had a requirement that all new teachers had to pass a basic skills test (the 3 R's only). The problem only 51% of the recent college grads with teaching credentials passed it, putting a severe strain on the school district. I turned down their request suggesting their efforts should be directed toward the colleges that graduate these folks, not remedial skills programs so they could pass a minimal (I'd say 8th grade) test.</p>
<p>Whereas I am not a fan of testing, I can see why some may be proposing it.</p>
<p>This whole NCLB for colleges is NEVER GONNA HAPPEN. It's a ridiculous proposal tentatively offered by a lame duck President. Most colleges and universities will dismiss the idea as absurd out-of-hand---as well they should. How many of the elite colleges and universities can you see signing on for such a thing? Come on now...! Everybody calm down. No one will remember the idea was ever proposed in a couple of years.</p>
<p>Well actually some democrat will propose it in a couple of years and you will all be for it but that is another story.</p>
<p>I am not a big fan of unfunded mandates or expanding federal power. Indeed if I had my druthers we would abolish the Department of Education, and the state departments of education too and leave the schools in local hands, but I am not sure how many of you most vocally opposed to NCLB even know what it does or how it works. The fact is NCLB has had a negligible impact on the amount of testing. That is increasing for a slew of reasons good, bad, and indifferent. NCLB just makes the states do something with the testing they were already doing. NCLB doesn't provide the tests, tell the states what has to be on the tests, or even define what constitutes pasing the tests.</p>
<p>Inteesting, and as in TX, I guess the private elites will be exempt, because they are private? So only the publics will be affected? What will this accomplish? There are many publics out there that have a large percentage of the college Sp Ed kids, the lower socio-economic kids, etc., who go there just because the college isn't as competetive. So what will the testing accomplish? Force colleges to teach basics to these kids? So instead of 4 years, they may have to attend 5-6 years. Many of these kids can barely afford attending 4 years, not more. They need to get jobs to support themselves and pay for themselves in college, and then they need to finish as soon as possible in order to get a better job. I don't get it - isn't this why there was the addition of an honors program in colleges? And what about colleges without a required core? So the kids there have to take classes they had no intention of taking just because of some stupid test????!!!!???? I, too, am a TX educator and HATE the testing. Enough already! Kids who didn't score high enough are getting pulled out of electives for extra tutorials, or being placed in remedial English/math/science/soc studies classes that focus on helping them pass the test. And who pays for these classes at the college level? The student who now must pay for a class to help him pass a test? At what rate? 250 an hour???? These are adults, Big Brother! Leave them alone. The world sees our university system to be one of the best, but the government wants to fix something that doesn't need to be fixed? We took creativity and thinking skills out of our schools with the testing, do we really want to do that with our colleges?</p>
<p>I haven't read the proposal but my guess is the testing would probably be tied to any federal aid and that any college public or private that has kids with federally subsidized loans or federally sunsidized work/study programs would be included from Harvard to the lowliest diploma mill.</p>
<p>Further since this testing is intended to measure the school not the student it wouldn't be a graduation requirement. It is just that schools that couldn't show they have actually managed to teach their students anything wouldn't be eligible for federally subsidized student loans. It is in effect a consumer protection law.</p>
<p>No I don't think it will go anywhere in republican controled congress but I will put money that essentially the same proposal will re-emerge in a democratic presidential campaign and that it will be the proliferation of online distance learning businesses/colleges that will be the principle focus. It will also be packaged as a consumer protection measure but the main feature - the schools have to be able to prove through testing that their product delivers observable results will be there.</p>
<p>CatotheCensor, some of us are VERY familiar with NCLB and the fact that it has changed drastically the way that schools run. I have a Ph.D. in education and read NCLB when it came out. I've also gone through multiple trainings in the law and what it entails. Let me also add that I grew up in and also currently reside in a very red state. I was a card carrying member of Teen-Age Republicans in high school. I claim neither Democrat nor Republican these days but consider each candidate based on their stand on the issues. This is one issue that I think was a huge band-aid that was touted as huge reform.</p>
<p>First off, state departments of education are absolutely essential because without them some kids would never get a decent education. They are to K-12 education what accrediting agencies are to higher ed. They make sure that all students are being taught what they are supposed to be taught. Testing, in general, is not a bad thing either. It's a good way to monitor progress. However, the pressure that has been put on these tests since NCLB came into being is enormous. They do not take into account the individual differences that children walk into school with. I used to teach in an extremely poor area where most of my parents had GED's if that much education. Those kindergartners arrived at our door knowing no letters, numbers, colors, etc. We started absolutely from scratch. Where I teach now is a middle class area. Almost all of our students arrive at kindergarten knowing most of their ABCs, many numbers, their colors, etc. Obviously, those kids will be farther at the end of the year because they started ahead. High stakes testing fails to recognize these facts.</p>
<p>Also, NCLB has changed teacher certification. I was an elementary ed major inititally and my certificate was K-8. I could teach any subject. When NCLB came along, my certificate changed to K-6 (we were not grandfathered in). However, if we had 18 undergraduate hours in one area (which we all had in two because it's required to get an elementary ed degree) then we could send those transcripts in and get secondary certification. I had the hours for English and Math. I sent in my transcripts and to my surprise was not granted 7th and 8th grade English and Math certification, but 7-12th grade certification in those areas which is ludicrous. With those certifications, I could essentially teach calculus which I have no business doing. So while NCLB sounds good and was written with good intentions, the reality of it is not as great as they sound.</p>