To all those in favor of critical thought, You have most likely heard about the situation in the Bronx at IS 318. On May 13 six classes of 8th graders staged a boycott in protest to being forced to take another standardized test, one of over two dozen this year. They boycotted one of the practice tests. An 8th grade social studies teacher, Douglas Avella, was falsely accused of instigating the students to boycott, and he is already in the rubber room and likely to lose his job entirely.
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Thursday, July 17, 2008
Support for Doug Avella Builds
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3 comments:
I'm so sick of people doing this. And in my opinion, tests are great and I'm so glad that they're mandatory. It's not as if the students are unaware of the content being tested. Study and be commited. That's it. But no, people have to overreact and start boycotting them. Absolutely juvenile.
Dear anonymous,
You're glad that over twenty standardized tests are mandatory? And what, to your understanding, is the reason for them? In my opinion, tests should be used ever so sparingly and to see if, possibly, the cirric. needs adjusting and where the students stand in any particular grade level, etc.. These rabble-rousing students were tested and tested and tested and nothing ever came of it. Absolutely wasteful. These students learned and grew so much more from this experience of focused organizing than anyone ever has from taking a standardized test.
I'm sorry that you feel so negatively toward students attempting to take ownership of their own education.
-joanna
As far as I'm concerned, eigth graders have to take 4 essential standardized examinations: Science, Social Studies, Mathematics, and Language Arts. That's FOUR. Sure they take practice now and then, but the amount of FORCED examinations from the state do not add up to TWENTY. Those students were tested many times only to ensure they were well-prepared for those examinations. That's it. How else can a city educational system with over 1 million students organize a way to see if their students are prepared for further education? You can't allow teachers to take on that job because then we'd have students who shouldn't be doing more advanced work trying and failing. The city doens't have a budget inflated enough to do anything too out of the ordinary. Thus, testing is essential in understanding where they stand. They have to learn to ACCEPT it is what it is.
- Brenda Lee
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