home | contact | faq

action items

Did you miss the October 13th District Family School Council Meeting concerning standardized testing? Here is a review of the evening's highlights.

The administration asked for questions to be pre-submitted so that they would be prepared for the meeting. We accommodated with a short list of questions (included below). However, the evening was structured as a lecture format employing various speakers from the district and our pre-submitted questions were never directly addressed. At the end of the hour, listeners were directed to fill out post cards with any questions and, it was reinforced, the speakers were on a tight schedule and needed to leave shortly. Based on this absurdity, we asked if we couldn't simply verbalize a question instead. Irene Benfatti, Superintendent, bravely offered to field our question. More on that shortly. First, some highlights.

The first speaker, Assistant Superintendent Joan Matula, gave a long presentation of what amounted to CTB-McGraw Hill literature. In fact, there was a tri-fold handout available at the meeting that nicely recapped the better written and better designed CTB-McGraw Hill propaganda, oops, we mean literature available to anyone who visits their website. Joan did, perhaps by accident, touch on the edge of one of the pre-submitted questions related to how much money will be spent with CTB-McGraw Hill this school year. Her aside that it works out to about $15.00 per student doesn't ring true, however. With approximately 2200 students in district, that would total $33,000.00. [The real total has been shown to be at least $48,000.00 based on an OPRA request submitted later.] Surely someone in the district knows how to print a report showing purchase orders by vendor?

Another highlight of the evening was a short report by soon to be retired Jim Gillock, Director of Pupil Services. Jim made several fascinating declarations. First, in regards to student portfolio assessments, especially K-2, Jim announced that "portfolios are not doing the job" and that they are "highly subjective". Interesting, particularly since Superintendent Irene Benfatti currently claims that portfolios are a valuable part of the overall assessment picture and that the new tests are simply one more piece of the puzzle. Which is it, folks?

As to the subjectivity of portfolios, Jim was apparently implying that standardized tests are objective assessments. Are they? Test questions are first written by subjective employees of CTB/McGraw Hill, the final questions on each particular test are chosen by another committee of subjective employees and contractors, the tests are proctored by still more subjective people within our own district, and the test-prep that may or may not have occurred prior to each test is subjective. In fact, the only objective part of standardized testing is the computer that reads the bubbles. So, which is preferable, Jim: a subjective one-on-one assessment of a student and his or her work over the course of a whole year by a professional who has a personal stake in seeing the child succeed, or a subjective one-time assessment over a few hours time via a series of inane questions written by complete strangers who wouldn't know the child taking the test from Adam? Of course, portfolio assessments, like anything else, can be implemented poorly--especially when there is no support from the administration.

Jim also asserted that the brain research of which he is an enthusiast indicates that at age nine, the "window of opportunity to learn to read closes" on our children. Standardized testing, for some unclear reason, is supposed to facilitate the fix for the reading emergency in Readington. We presume, then, that our professional teachers are not capable of determining for themselves when a child can and cannot read. Scary stuff. Perhaps we should make an effort to notify the teachers, colleges, and volunteer organizations across our country that are wasting their time trying to teach adults how to read or teaching ESL courses to immigrants. After all, their window to learn how to read already closed at age nine.

By far the most…um, energetic speaker of the evening was Principal Johanna Ruberto, who gave a leering, vaguely threatening rendition of that old favorite: "I know better than you do". She'll be appearing here all week, and tips are appreciated.

Let's get to the beef of this sandwich. We were allowed one verbalized question in the time allotted, which was: We disagree on many aspects of the testing. Instead of throwing research back and forth at each other all day, suppose that parents be given the sanctioned choice to opt-out of the non state-mandated testing? In other words, if a parent is concerned about the effects of the tests on his or her child, that child can go to the library or stay home on test day. The answer, from Irene Benfatti, was that if a parent keeps a child out of school on test day, that day will count as an unexcused absence and the child will be given the test anyway when he or she returns.

So, dear parents, the administration has made it clear on this night that they do not intend to refute or even address our arguments directly, engage us in a dialog, or allow exceptions to their policies formed by their superior understanding of child development. Dear parents, we need only drop off our children on the first day of school and pick them up upon graduation. The experts will take it from there. What a relief.

The following questions were pre-submitted to the administration for the October 13 meeting.

-- Will parents be given the sanctioned choice to "opt-out" of the non state-mandated tests? What is the mechanism to do so? What will those children be given to do during the testing?

-- What is the total dollar amount on purchase orders to CTB/McGraw Hill this school year, whether allocated or actually spent?

-- What is Readington doing to strengthen more accurate means of assessment such as student portfolios? How uniformly are these other forms of assessments applied within the district?

-- Health Professional Barbara Lentine made reference during her talk at Back To School night to an "incident" with a Whitehouse School student becoming ill during testing. How many students in all of the schools saw the nurse as a result of the testing? Did Readington compile any statistics or anecdotal evidence of the number of children who cried or showed other evidence of stress during the testing?

-- How many teachers in the district used the practice activities suggested by CTB/McGraw Hill on their website, or other similar activities, to coach students in their classrooms for the Terra Nova test? How many will be doing so for the next round of tests?

-- What is Readington doing to strengthen more accurate means of assessment such as student portfolios? How uniformly are these other forms of assessments applied within the district?

-- Readington administered the Terra Nova test in the Fall. Are there plans to administer the test again in the Spring?

--Now that Readington is on the early warning list for AYP, how will our teachers be directed to change their classrooms to improve scores on the state-mandated testing? Given the limited classroom time, what classroom activities will be dropped or changed in order to improve scores and meet AYP?

--Will there be "practice" activities or other test-prep measures for both the state-mandated testing and the Terra Nova testing in our classrooms, or will the coaching be the same for all the testing?

-- Exactly how much money does Readington receive in NCLB funds?  To what, specifically, are those funds allocated?

-- Has Readington considered opting out of the NCLB funds (as specified in the September 14 memo to school administrators from NJDOE Assistant Commissioner Isaac Bryant) to simply avoid the consequences of not meeting AYP in the future?