MORATORIUM on STANDARDIZED TESTING - NEW PARADIGMS

April 6th 4 PM (PST),Dr. Rose will discuss a “Moratorium on Standardized Testing.” He will explain Dr.James Popham’s essay –Testing a Stacked Deck – and how the political uses and emphasis on testing has destroyed teacher morale, labeled millions of capable students as stupid and failures, and kept many mired in the culture of poverty and hopelessness.        Besides being educationally unsound to determine a student, a teacher, a school, or a district’s real achievements based on one measure, this is not necessary. Quoting from George Lucas’ Edutopia and teachers from www.teachers.net,he will focus on programs that prove there’s more to education than limiting the school day to the 3 R’s.       A Teacher of the Year in 1989 for his work with at-risk students, is the author of many educational books and he will offer solutions to the testing monster’s misuse of money and precious education time. He believes that many of the problems in education are due to minds locked in the status quo of beliefs and behaviors that were effective in the 19th and 20th Centuries, but are inadequate to meet the complex problems of the 21st.        He has spent 50 years challenging what didn’t work and isn’t working now. He claims that people get stuck in mindsets and can’t get out of them because they keep asking the wrong questions that result in solutions that don’t work.        By taking ideas and concepts from many other disciplines besides education, he has been successful in teaching in every grade with every type of student from every type of background and social class. It’s a belief in democratic ideals and their realization by truly focusing on one student at a time (and recognizing his uniqueness and intrinsic value) while developing his class into a safe place where all of them can make improvements in all their abilities.        This will take a paradigm shift in thinking.