Deducation US

According to the Huffington Post on March 26, “President Barack Obama said Monday that students should take fewer standardized tests and school performance should be measured in other ways than just exam results. Too much testing makes education boring for kids, he said.”

It’s a start, I guess, but the combination of the lobbyists for the multibillion dollar testing industry and the rightwing delusion that these tests have some kind of meaning is going to make it hard to act on this. Even if he really wanted to act on it. (And I’m not sure he really does.) 

What kind of strategy can there be to sell this idea of fewer tests (let alone no tests) to an American public increasingly mean-spirited and nasty, for whom rigged tests (yes, they are gamed to work against minorities and the poor) are evidence that we still aren’t being nasty enough to our children, to the power of the wealthy whites? 

The funding for the National Writing Project is on the cutting block of House Republicans (along with NPR and other valuable services). This “jeopardizes a nationwide network of 70,000 teachers” who are devoted to teaching writing better. It sets up local projects for the teaching and learning of writing, it respects its teachers and students, and seeks to give them the power and autonomy to expand literacy. How anyone could oppose the teaching of writing is beyond me… 

While not explicitly tied to NCLB in one way or another, it’s part and parcel of the whole Republican gestalt of ruining what’s good in American education. 

There is a grassroots Twitter campaign to keep the funds for the NWP: Blog for NWP. Tweet (#blog4NWP) and blog to save the NWP. It’s much too important to lose.