July 27, 2005

No Money-Wasting Child Test Scheme Left Behind

The successes of “No Child Left Behind “ should be recognized for what they are, not as a discovered or now-proved cure for all that ails education and society.

What they illustrate is that teaming up and working positively on a situation can bring good results.

This should not be assumed as meaning that the best answers have been found but merely that some good answers can do good things for a number if properly and positively applied.

Also in the K-12 education field, there has been some success and some progress with the ISTEP program. Drawing the best out it has been more difficult, in part because there was so much knee-jerk education field hostility toward it earlier in some vocal places that it had a hard time getting off the ground. All this has made it harder to find correct answers on the best directions for Indiana.

Now, unfortunately, just as we are approaching having a good data base for looking at ISTEP results to see if they really can and do point in the right directions for Indiana education, we appear on a determined course for changing the testing from the fall to the spring, as if that would somehow make kids smarter or education better.

What it DOES mean, as we noted during the legislative session and reiterate now, well in advance of the next one, is that more taxpayer money will be needed at a time when education money has many real demands on it, and we can junk about eight years of data from past testings. In other words, back to zero.

Having a whole school year to teach for the ISTEP tests may be a good way to score points for an administrator or school board but it doesn’t appear to do a lot for real education.

Indiana should flunk this proposal and leave this money-wasting scheme behind.

JIM BARBIERI

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