As I see it, it is not about testing or education but about privatization of education. This whole "measurement of learning objectives" is a thinly veiled effort to sabotage public education system so it can be easier dismantled and its more profitable portions sold to well-connected entrepreneurs. They know that teachers and teach unions are the biggest obstacle to privatization, so there is on open season on teachers.
Case in point, last year the superintendent of DC schools Michelle Rhee sacked 260+ "bad" teachers supposedly due to budgetary shortages. This year, however, DC school miraculously has a surplus that will be used to reward "good" teachers (i.e. Rhee's cronies) http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/04/13/AR2010041302834.html
The only way to stop that testing nonsense is to derail privatization of public education, but this seems unlikely because privatization is supported even by many liberals, including Obama.
Wojtek
On Tue, Apr 13, 2010 at 8:33 PM, Joanna <123hop at comcast.net> wrote:
> The ONLY way to fight this at this point is to go on a test-taking strike.
> If they have no test results, they have no fodder to feed into this infernal
> machine. (I'm talking about all the national/state mandated tests)
>
> This is completely doable because you don't have to get all the kids to
> refuse the test, just enough to make results meaningless.
>
> Joanna
> ___________________________________
> http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/mailman/listinfo/lbo-talk
>