Dana Goldstein: The Pitfalls of Testing

Dana Goldstein: The Pitfalls of Testing

Dana Goldstein: The Pitfalls of Testing

Why is the Obama administration pushing testing on our schools?

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The Obama administration is now tying states’ access to federal education funds to the ways they hold teachers accountable for students’ success. That all sounds good in theory, but The Nation‘s Dana Goldstein explains how this is causing most states to push test-heavy approaches to evaluating student achievement, and how such models can hurt student’s engagement more than they can help.

For more on educational policy, tune into a live chat hosted by Dana Goldstein this Thursday, May 17 at 5pm with a representative from the Educators for Excellence network and Mark Anderson, a New York City public school special-education teacher and contributor to the blog Schools as Ecosystems.

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As we’ve seen over and over, this administration uses lies, misdirection, and attempts to flood the zone to justify its abuses of power at home and abroad. Just as Trump, Marco Rubio, and Pete Hegseth offer erratic and contradictory rationales for the attacks on Iran, the administration is also spreading the lie that the upcoming midterm elections are under threat from noncitizens on voter rolls. When these lies go unchecked, they become the basis for further authoritarian encroachment and war. 

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