Neillsville District Administrator Talks State Budget and Public Education, Part 3 Testing
Wednesday, July 29th, 2015 -- 11:31 AM
-With the passing of the state budget recently, many people are not happy with the lack of support for public education, especially for small, rural schools.I spoke with Neillsville District Administrator John Gaier about the budget with regards to public education. Mr. Gaier talked about the large increase in state testing.
"The State of Wisconsin since 2000 has moved from 4 mandated test, to 7 mandates tests, to 21 mandated tests and now 22 mandated tests. So, our kids, in my opinion, are over tested. People have to realize that when we are spending days of our school year and weeks of our school year doing standardized testing, we're not teaching anything. And that is lost time for kids to be learning. And that concerns me."
"There is a much larger emphasis on the ACT exam. I think what that's going to show is that wealthy schools and wealthy communities will do very well. And poorer communities won't do as well. But I think the whole testing issue that has come up lately is, and the rating system they are coming up with, is really to try to identify failing schools so that they can be turned over to for profit companies. That is the big emphasis in south eastern Wisconsin."
"It's interesting to note that the original rating system that was used was put together by a bipartisan group of legislators and educators. This new rating system was simply put in place by the legislators. No educators were included in that discussion."
He also talked about a new initiative added to the budget which requires high school students to take a civics test before they can graduate.
"First, it's another test that kids have to take. And, in this case, it's a high stakes test. The law regarding this test is kids have to pass it at a certain level or they can't graduate. So, it becomes a high stakes test."
"How it impacts our district? We have to find more time for testing. We also have to find more proctors. We take teachers out of the classrooms in order to proctor tests. The other thing that this does is it starts to drive the curriculum because you want your kids to do well on the test, so you have to change your curriculum to address what's ever in the test."
"I am a huge proponent of creating students that will be strong citizens. Citizens that are good for their communities, good for their states and good for their country. I believe that we build strong citizenship through civic service, not a paper and pencil test. So, if we have to take kids out of projects like helping with the food bank, like going to the nursing home, like being big brothers and big sisters to younger kids in need. If we have to reduce those programs in order to study for a paper and pencil test, I think we have lost the real focus of creating good citizens."
Coming up on Thursday, Mr. Gaier will talk about another new initiative in the budget which allows home schooled students to play public school sports and more.
For More:
Part 1, Overall: http://cwbradio.com/news/?fn_mode=fullnews&fn_id=14701
Part 2, Funding and Vouchers: http://cwbradio.com/news/?fn_mode=fullnews&fn_id=14709
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