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A week doesn’t go by, without a mainstream media story on the “horrors” of standardized testing, in which reporters tell of widespread testing error, of how testing is causing students to drop out of school, or of how testing is causing an epidemic of cheating.The story behind the stories is that the relative prevalence of testing error is infinitesimal, that columnists stressing the dropout factor are mindlessly repeating a myth invented by radical Boston College teacher education professor Walter Haney, and that cheating is more easily prevented on standardized tests than with their alternatives.For years, the American public has been...

HARTFORD — Nazanin Hibodi is from Iran, has attended school in Germany, and has only been living in the United States for two years. But not long after she arrived at Hillhouse High School in New Haven, she was forced to take a high-stakes exam, the Connecticut Academic Performance Test, in a language she could barely understand. She was allowed to use a dictionary, but it took too long on a time-limited test. "It’s really hard for students who are coming to another country not knowing any English," said the teenager. "If I were in my country and I would...

School provides FCAT loophole IN COLLEGE: Suze Barthelemy, 19, left, and Stephania Fourron, 22, are among those students who turned to North Atlantic Regional High after failing the FCAT. DONNA E. NATALE PLANAS/HERALD STAFF Dozens of county students are transferring their high school credits to an out-of-state private school, using a loophole that lets them earn a diploma without passing the state's graduation test. BY MATTHEW I. PINZUR mpinzur@herald.com Two years after arriving from Port-au-Prince, Edison High student Stephania Fourron had learned enough English to pass the math portion of the Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test, but failed the reading exam...

Education should be about children, not partisan politics. Yet, sadly, there has been a lot of political posturing on this issue lately. It may be inevitable during an election year. I admit that last week I, too, ratcheted up the debate with a very poor word choice to describe the leadership of the nation's largest teachers union. I chose my words carelessly, and I am truly sorry for the hurt and confusion they caused. I especially want to be clear on one point. As ill-considered as my words were, my disappointment was directed only -- and I mean only --...

<p>High school sophomores throughout Arizona start taking the AIMS test Tuesday, and it's only natural that the students are experiencing pretest jitters.</p> <p>Their high school diploma is riding on the test.</p> <p>Members of the Class of 2006 are the first students who will not receive a high school diploma unless they pass the AIMS reading, writing and math sections by graduation day. Although this year's high school AIMS is easier and kids will get four more chances to take the test, principals know that about half of last year's sophomore flunked.</p>

WARNING: Anger Management Needed! Schools with large populations of immigrant students will soon get some breathing room from testing requirements under reforms announced Thursday by federal and state education officials. Educators have complained that the current testing system too often labels as failures children with limited English skills and the schools where they are concentrated. Under the federal No Child Left Behind law, schools are held accountable for the test scores of various subgroups of students, including those with limited English skills. Long article but a necessary read

How accurate are the leak tests that are provided at these sites: http://grc.com/default.htm http://grc.com/lt/leaktest.htm

A patchwork of state standards is failing to produce high school graduates who are prepared either for college or for work, three education policy organizations say in a new report. The solution, they say, is to adopt rigorous national standards that will turn the high school diploma into a "common national currency." "For too many graduates, the American high school diploma signifies only a broken promise," the groups, which favor standardized testing to improve education, say. Working through what they call the American Diploma Project, the organizations — Achieve Inc., the Education Trust and the Thomas B. Fordham Foundation —...

Star student gets F for attitude Garfield disciplines senior for shirking standardized exam By Stephanie Warsmith Beacon Journal staff writer The nearly straight-A student would rather have been in class. Instead, Jake Bogdanovich was taking a test with no bearing on his grades or ability to get into college. ``I didn't want to be there,'' he said. ``I didn't want to take the test.'' So, the Garfield High School senior did something rare for him: rebel. On the familiar bubble answer sheet, he made a tic-tac-toe pattern. He drew characters from the television show South Park in the short-answer section....

Students who came away from last week's Regents Math A exam convinced it was a snap may well have been ahead of the curve. Scoring scales issued Wednesday by the state will produce passing rates of 85 to 90 percent statewide, educators familiar with the exam say. In contrast, only 40 percent of teens passed math exams last spring when more stringent scoring standards were used -- a debacle that touched off widespread protests by teachers and parents. Local reactions to the latest scoring system vary sharply, with some school administrators and teachers convinced it is fairer to students and...

<p>YOUNGSTOWN, Ohio -- Matthew Benton, a self-possessed sixth-grader with an "A" average and an I.Q. of 132, is likely to pass the Ohio Proficiency Tests next month with ease.</p> <p>But his prowess on the tests, which are used to assess schools' performance, won't help Bennett Elementary, where Matthew is in a citywide program for academically gifted students.</p>

Law School Admissions Test (LSAT) essay question from 1988: "Community Hospital, serving a population of 150,00 people, has received a large federal grant to improve its facilites. Write an argument supporting one of the following proposals for use of those funds. Two considerations guide your decision: 1. Funding is only adequate to institute one of the programs under consideration and future funding cannot be anticipated. 2. Community Hositpal is committed to meeting the needs of the community it serves. Specifically, the community has a large population of people in retirement and has numerous, haszardous industrial plants. One proposal calls for...

Md. (AP) - The 21-year-old son of former Vice President Al Gore must complete substance abuse counseling as part of a pretrial diversion program to settle a marijuana possession charge. The agreement approved by a judge Monday calls for the misdemeanor charge to be dropped after a year if Albert Gore III submits to urine testing, community service and counseling, and steers clear of criminal convictions. The younger Gore, who attends Harvard University, had no comment after the brief hearing. He was accompanied by his mother, Tipper Gore, who did not comment other than saying the issue was a ``private...

FORT HUACHUCA - A new high-technology life began for this Southeastern Arizona Army post when the Electronic Proving Ground came here and re-activated the fort on Feb. 1, 1954. A half-century later, much of the post's missions are in the Command, Control, Communications, Computers, Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance, the military's C4ISR arena. EPG is still the major leader in the testing and developing of critical systems for the Army and all of the nation's armed services. Col. Jerome Payne sits at the EPG's helm. And he is the only soldier now with the organization, that includes 130 civil service employees...

ISLAMABAD: Pakistan has decided to test several indigenous missiles in a bid to restore the strategic balance upset by India when it test fired its missiles last month, Online news agency reports. The testing will begin in late March and continue till early April, defence officials said.

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Following up on plans outlined in President Bush's annual address to the American people, a Pennsylvania lawmaker formally introduced a new program Wednesday encouraging public schools to test students for drug use. The $23 million testing plan, targeted at grades 8-12, would not be mandatory, but parents who do not want their children to participate would have to opt out. It is sure to draw critics who argue the pilot program will invade student privacy. But Rep. John Peterson, R-Pa., said efforts to get youngsters off drugs far outweigh any concerns over their privacy. ''This is about...

This article pertains to the Charlotte-Mecklenburg (NC) public schools, but it is applicable to many other public school systems. A great deal of attention is being given to "the gap," but less to overall achievement. I wonder why... A coalition of activists gathered at the Marshall Park statue of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Thursday and urged Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools to close longstanding test-score gaps between minority and white students. The recent release of CMS's first-ever results on the National Assessment of Educational Progress, often known as the nation's report card, highlighted that gap: White students were three to five times...

<p>Washington -- The Bush administration has decided to revamp the civics test that hundreds of thousands of prospective citizens each year must pass to become Americans, and is developing a new exam, officials said Thursday.</p> <p>President Bush alluded to the effort in his speech last week on immigration reform, and this week the Bureau of Citizenship and Immigration Services convened a two-day conference of more than 100 immigrant advocates and academics at a hotel here to discuss the principles for change and its implications.</p>

Test for U.S. Citizenship Faces Overhaul The White House wants the exam to reflect what it means to be an American. But immigrant advocates fear new barriers. By Ricardo Alonso-Zaldivar, Times Staff Writer WASHINGTON — The Bush administration has decided to revamp the civics test that hundreds of thousands of prospective citizens each year must pass to become Americans, and is developing a new exam, officials said Thursday. President Bush alluded to the effort in his speech last week on immigration reform, and this week the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services convened a two-day conference of more than 100 immigrant...

<p>The nation's terror alert level was raised to orange in the weeks leading up to the holiday season because of threats that Al Qaeda (search) was possibly looking to use explosives on Air France flights, Fox News has confirmed.</p> <p>For the first time since the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks, a U.S. intelligence source was able to give officials such specific information about how Usama bin Laden's (search) terror group may be planning imminent attacks in the United States using commercial airliners, U.S. officials confirmed to Fox News. The source provided strategic and tactical details of how the terror network wanted to carry out terror attacks on American political and economic targets.</p>