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The latest on the Key Bridge collapse, New York puts forth legislation to get clean energy projects on the grid and Wisconsin and other states join a federal summer food program to help feed kids across the country.

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Republicans float conspiracy theories on the collapse of Baltimore's Key Bridge, South Carolina's congressional elections will use a map ruled unconstitutional, and the Senate schedules an impeachment trial for Homeland Secretary Mayorkas.

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Historic wildfires could create housing and health issues for rural Texans, a Kentucky program helps prison parolees start a new life, and descendants of Nicodemus, Kansas celebrate the Black settlers who journeyed across the 1870s plains seeking self-governance.

Too Great a Focus on Standardized Tests in Massachusetts?

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Tuesday, November 17, 2015   

BOSTON – This week marks American Education Week, and the stage is set for the state Board of Elementary and Secondary Education to take a vote today on the future of standardized testing.

Barbara Madeloni, president of the Massachusetts Teachers Association, is disappointed that the board that sets policy for public school students in the commonwealth is spending so much time trying to figure out the best standardized test to administer.

"We keep being distracted from real issues of teaching, and learning, by these questions about which high-stakes, standardized test we should be using," she says. "In fact, we shouldn't be using any high-stakes, standardized testing."

At the final public hearing before today's vote, Madeloni called for a three-year moratorium to assess the value of standardized testing.

Special education teacher Heidi Lahey of Sterling, who serves as president of the Wachusett Regional Education Association, says as early as kindergarten, standardized tests can squelch the desire to learn, even for the youngest students.

"When they hear the kids who know the letters, and when they don't, they know that they are falling short, self-labeling themselves as 'failure,'" she says. "Kids are really hard on themselves."

Madeloni notes the board will be voting on a new Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System Test, version 2.0. It would replace a test known by the acronym PARCC, Madelino says the name change won't resolve the public's concerns about too much testing.

"To say that it is 'PARCC' is a problem," she says. "So I think we've done a good job pushing back at the PARCC testing itself. There's a shell game going on, and in fact, we're going to get PARCC. They're just going to call it by another name."

Madeloni says the tests have been criticized for reducing classroom teaching time, and as a result, narrowing what students are taught – a concept that is often called "teaching to the test."

The Board of Elementary and Secondary Education meeting gets underway today at 8:30 a.m. at the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education at 75 Pleasant St. in Malden. It is scheduled to run until 1 p.m.


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