I disagree. While a school system isn’t exactly accountable if it only answers to itself, there is accountability when it answers to the parents of the children it serves. For the public school system, I do think there needs to be additional levels, ie., someone to appeal to when the district isn’t responding as well as other options.

But my senator doesn’t need to know that my daughter is behind in spelling and ahead in math.

You can’t mandate a single test for all students without also controlling what is being taught and the way in which it is taught at every level tested. The older a child is, the less significant the potential problems.

How could better “assessments,” meaning better practices of communicating our work as learners to outsiders, help shape our society’s notions of what learning is and to whom it belongs?

I don’t think that is possible by completely adopting the prevailing notions regarding testing. I think one of the things which homeschooling has brought to education in general is just by being there as an alternative. Testing serves a purpose, but not the one that lawmakers are trying to make it serve. The companies who design these tests themselves say that they cannot be used as a single determining factor for a student’s academic learning. They are one independent measure, intended to check a teacher against state standards because in general, the testing results will line up with what she says her class is doing. Their will be anomalies, but so long as the district has greater control, they can adjust for that and trust the teacher’s judgment. On the other hand, if she says her students are all excelling (or flunking) and the test shows radically different results, there is probably a problem.

This paradigm exists to give parents, not the greater society, tools for measuring the performance of the schools their children are attending.

At least here in NE, we are not held to state standards. A test based on them would make little sense, and would inevitably restrict the freedoms of some homeschoolers. Not us so much (at least not anymore), because I’m a former school teacher and while I am much more relaxed than I used to be, I still tend towards structuring our lessons in a more schoolish way. Not everyone does, and I don’t think we can force them all into that box, even if the goal is to improve our engagement with society.

“After all, how do we really know what they are learning if they don’t take The Test?”

That actually is a legitimate question that needs to be answered clearly and forcefully in the public square by the homeschooling community, and with something other than, “It’s none of your business.”

The difficulty, I think, is that while, as Chistiansen & Co. argue, “the form of the assessment and the form of the accountability should be as local as possible,” that doesn’t match up with the nature of accountability.

Good assessment is local, but good accountability by definition is non-local: you need to communicate the nature of your work to people outside your own community.

Whether or not they do so in a valid way, tests scores (and letter grades) are intended to communicate the quality of a student or a school efficiently to people (legislators, employers, admissions counselors, etc.) who are not members of the learning or professional communities that they are required to manage, judge, and regulate. A portfolio of history or math papers with student reflection and commentary (to pick one non-test form of assessment) is fine to show your fellow students, historians, or mathematicians how well you know your stuff; but it often won’t mean a thing to your local state senator or Joe Voter who wants to make sure the kids aren’t “falling behind.” They need something that comes out of the learners’ context and crosses into theirs and tells them what they should do. Despite their many limitations, test scores are concrete, actionable information.

If we aren’t able to provide that sort of information on our own terms, then I think we will eventually be obligated to provide it on others’ terms. I understand that the demand to be accountable to outsiders has the potential to be oppressive (not to mention just plain annoying), but it also has the potential to be a place of positive engagement. What strategies could homeschoolers use to communicate well with outsiders? How could better “assessments,” meaning better practices of communicating our work as learners to outsiders, help shape our society’s notions of what learning is and to whom it belongs?

That article was written April 07:

‘Posted by Chris Lehmann on April 01, 2007′

It’s now September 08, and Spellings is still DOE secretary.

Was DOE secretary promised to Christensen then he was duped? Was it a ruse to get a barrier for NCLB out of the way?

In the private sector it would be called, “insider trading, or conflict of interest,” severely punishable under law by: government

http://www.leadertalk.org/2007/04/sweeping_change.html

Too bad it was written on April 1.

Great minds think alike!!!

I can’t help but think Christensen should not have left. It is when good men stand down, evil men will take their place.