The student speakers at PH's graduation on Friday were excellent. Their wisdom was beyond their years. Their comments were thoughtful on on target. In my opinion, they out - ranked the school administrators' speeches by light -years! The students elevated the thought that the graduates are NOT the sum of their scores on SOl tests, SAT, etc.

I am so sorry for the events at WF. I am so sorry that the RCPS has allowed "fear" to permeate the system - leaving many educators deeply troubled and constantly looking over their shoulders. The School Board ($) and the central administrators MUST conduct themselves ethically. Administrators MUST treat everyone in their buildings with respect. Teachers must demonstrate professional behaviors ... that doesn't mean wearing a tie or heels. Parents must become invested in their children's education... they ARE their children's primary teachers.

Please take a look at the site from which the information was copied below.
The following was taken from: http://www.wyoea.org/qualityschools/high-stakes-testing.html

The Perils of High-stakes Testing
"Far from improving education, high-stakes testing marks a major retreat from fairness, from accuracy, from quality and from equity."
The Late Senator Paul Wellstone, (1944-2002)

Nichols and Berliner cite Campbell' s Law, brought to the attention of social scientists in 1975 by Donald Campbell, which stipulates that:

"the more any quantitative social indicator is used for social decision-making, the more subject it will be to corruption pressures and the more apt it will be to distort and corrupt the social processes it was intended to monitor."

Using examples from business, sports, and government, Nichols and Berliner point out multiple instances of what happens when indicators have high-stakes consequences attached. "the more importance that an indicator takes on, the more likely it, and the people who depend on it, will be corrupted."

Nichols and Berliner are not against accountability. They are not against standardized testing. They are against high-stakes tests, because they result in cheating, in exclusion of students, in erosion of test validity, and in damage to the professionalism of educators.

Some of the ways in which education has been corrupted to make school test scores appear higher, and to make it appear that students have learned more, include:

a narrowing of the curricula,
an increase in time devoted to activities focused on how to take the test,
apparent increases in cheating by administrators and teachers,
forcing out low-performing students,
manipulation of dropout, special education and ELL rates, and
increased retention rates.