Tuesday, December 11, 2012

Minnesota's state mandated child abuse: standardized testing of special needs students.

This is madness. I have a post pending about the struggles we've had with grading and our non-degree-candidate #1 son; this news story hits on a related topic:

When tests tell teachers nothing: Special needs not met by standardized tests | Twin Cities Daily Planet

...  teacher Rachel Peulen spends two to three weeks administering a test that she knows will tell her next to nothing about her students.

On most days, Peulen’s middle schoolers each work on activities designed to meet their particular needs. One student works on remembering classmates’ names. Another practices recognizing flashcards inscribed with simple words. Her most advanced students do simple arithmetic...

... But over three weeks, Peulen takes each student out of the classroom for up to an hour-and-a-half, so she can ask them to compare fractions, find the slope of a line and identify the main idea of a story. With no additional staff to assist her, paraprofessionals take over the class...

These tests are the equivalent of scoring a paraplegic on their long jump ability.

I hope Nolan Murphy was misquoted here, because he doesn't come across very well...

Minneapolis Public schools’ lead teacher for developmental and cognitive disabilities programs, Nolan Murphy, said some good has come out of testing students with disabilities: more than ever, special education teachers are aligning their lessons with those of their grade-level general education peers.

It's worse than madness, it's pointless cruelty. As a physician I'm legally mandated to report suspected child abuse. So where do I report the State of Minnesota?

1 comment:

Nathanael said...

They're copying this from the insane testing protocols in phys-ed classes, which are utterly pointless -- and cruel -- for anyone with any sort of physical disability, even a very mild one. They've been around a long time, since the 70s I think.