teaching malinche

The new test scores from the California State Testing Program (STAR) are now available for teachers, parents, administrators and educational researchers to look at.

I think it is worth putting out there some interesting educational perspectives on the STAR tests:

While students’ test scores continue to increase overall on state achievement tests in the US, our students are not making any gains on international standards of educational achievement.

International standards include more critical thinking skills necessary for professional employment opportunities. The United States scores are actually dropping on international measures of assessment in spite of more teaching to state standardized tests.  This is disproportionately affecting poor students and Latino and African-American students who often go to poorly funded public schools that spend more time on state test preparation, and less time developing critical thinking skills.

If you are interested in these issues as I am, here are a couple of easy to read articles on the topic by Linda Darling Hammond, a very well-respected teacher educator and researcher on schools and learning.

http://www.thenation.com/article/restoring-our-schools

http://ed.stanford.edu/news/darling-hammond-excessive-testing-dangerous-obsession

Mamá Malinche