j:\doc\web\2000\05\mpstest.txt Interesting, tell us more about these "performance assessments" and how they are different from the atrocities being inflicted by various states. My friends tell me that Value Added Assessment is actually pretty accurate, though from this message probably mis-applied if the whole universe is going to revolve around it. -----Original Message----- From: Bob Peterson [mailto:REPMilw@AOL.COM] Sent: Thursday, May 11, 2000 4:15 PM To: ARN-L@LISTS.CUA.EDU Subject: Anti-testing leaflet from Milwaukee Dear friends on this list, We are involved in a very difficult struggle here. This is the third leaflet we have put out in the effort (text only -- it is laid out in a user friendly way.) Emergency! Emergency! Emergency! The Milwaukee School Board is on the verge of massively increasing standardized testing in MPS with virtually no input from teachers or parents. Teachers and parents need to lobby School Board members before the meeting on Tuesday, May 30th when a final vote is taken. Concerned parents and staff are invited to a meeting on Wed., May 17 at 4:30 PM at Fratney Street School, 3255 N. Fratney, to discuss what can be done about this plan and to hear Monty Neill, the Executive Director of FairTest, a national leader against excessive testing. While most teachers' and parents' attention was focused on budget cuts, the MPS administration hatched a plan to increase standardized testing in MPS by three fold. Then with only one public hearing which limited people to two minutes each, the Board's Innovation and School Reform Committee approved the plan. The plan calls for spending over $1 million on norm-referenced standardized tests for all students starting in first grade. The tests will be in reading, writing, language and math. Superintendent Korte wrote in a May 2 letter, that "vocabulary, language mechanics, spelling and mathematics computation" would also be tested "in grades 1, 2, and 3." Most national and international professional organizations that deal with young children oppose give group-administered standardized tests to children in 1st and 2nd grade. MPS chooses to ignore the collective wisdom of groups such as the National Association for the Education of Young Children, the National Council of Teachers of English, the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics, the Association for Children Education International, National Association of Elementary School Principals, etc. The School Board's plan calls for "replacing" the district's current performance assessments with the norm-referenced tests to measure the "value-added" that each teacher contributes to a child each year.The current performance assessments are to become "embedded" in the classroom, but there is no allocation of monies for inservice, scoring, or development of prompts or explanation of how the "embedding" is going to occur. It appears that the performance assessments which have pushed achievement in MPS are history. Get out pencils and bubble sheets! School board member John Gardner stated that such test scores should be used to evaluate schools and individual teachers. Call the following board members and ask them to vote to send this item back to committee: Larry O'Neil 321-7222; Warren Braun 453-7011, Joe Dannecker 486-9358; Jeff Spence, 535-0997; Don Werra 354-0109, and Charlene Hardin 265-8182. (Werra and Hardin voted to postpone the testing plan at the committee level. Gardner, Thompson and Johnson seem set in their support for the plan.) The School Board chooses to overlook and ignore MPS parents, the major stakeholders, and MPS teachers, the assessment professionals -- both of whom know far more about teaching, testing, and learning than the board! For more information call Bob 265-6217, Patricia 871-7433, or Larry 906-1776 Ad Hoc Committee Against Excessive Testing and Parents United for Public Schools email: repmilw@aol.com -------------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe from the ARN-L list, send command SIGNOFF ARN-L to LISTSERV@LISTS.CUA.EDU.