From the N&O:
The State Board of Education could agree today to tie teacher bonuses to high school graduation rates as part of an overhaul of North Carolina’s school testing program. Elimination of the state’s controversial writing tests could also be approved today, in what’s being billed as an effort to bring the state’s testing program into the 21st century.
Make no mistake about it. This is no overhaul of the testing program. The State Board of Education has done nothing but tinker, fiddle with, adjust, play about with, fool with, futz with the state testing program, the ABCs of Public Education. An “overhaul” of the testing program would include scrapping the current system and implementing a norm-referenced test that allows parents to compare the performance of their children to students in other states.
And what does it mean to bring our testing program “into the 21st century” anyway? The State Board of Education has had seven and a half years to bring the testing program “into the 21st century” and, apparently, there is still more to be done. At what point in the 21st century will we have a 21st century testing program?
