YES it us true.... Even with the increasing number of days wasted on largely worthless testing.. Think WASL...
You could actually find out what your kid knows by having someone administer the IOWA test of Basic Skills. The ITBS was given last in 2005 in Washington State... but now you can get your kid IOWA tested... Read on.
Check HERE
Individuals can administer the ITBS test as long as they meet very simple requirements:
The Iowa Tests® | BJU Press Testing & Evaluation
Testers and parents, a newer form of The Iowa Tests® is now available! The Form A includes some exciting features that were not available on previous editions. Among them are a Primary Reading Profile score report for grades K-3 (included for free!), and an Interest Explorer™ for grades 9-12.
Available year-round, these nationally standardized tests meet most transfer or state requirements. You may administer either the complete battery or certain parts of the test.
The confidential computer-scored results include norm- and skill mastery-referenced scores. We also provide a score interpretation brochure.
The Iowa Tests of Basic Skills® (ITBS®) and Iowa Tests of Educational Development® (ITED®) are also available in combination with the CogAT® (Cognitive and Abilities Test™) and/or with Interest Explorer (grades 9–12).
To administer The Iowa Tests (achievement tests) and/or CogAT (abilities tests), you must be listed with us as a pre-approved tester for The Iowa Tests, which requires a one-time completion of an application.
Application requires proof that you meet at least ONE of the following requirements:
-Be a teacher who has been certified by a state department of education to teach in a public school or other conventional school (homeschool or local association certificate does not qualify).
-Have a Bachelor’s degree
-Be currently (or have been in the past) a full-time academic classroom teacher in a K5–12 conventional school (not a homeschool).
K5–2 (Levels 5–8) must be administered separately by grade.
Grades 3–8 (Levels 9–14) may be administered together.
Grades 9–12 (Levels 15–18) may be administered together.
Key Markers Relating to Organizational Health
12 years ago
5 comments:
This is why Washington needs a whistleblower law - educators are not protected in Washington.
Former State Representative Jim Trakas and the Ohio Department of Education (ODE) requested that the Auditor of State examine the Cleveland Academy of Math Science and Technology (CAMST) due to inaccurate enrollment reporting.
In order to begin an audit, the Auditor of State’s office used records from the school’s bank to recreate a financial history. The recreated documents allowed auditors to conduct a financial audit which showed that the school submitted fraudulent monthly reports to ODE. The reports stated that the school had as many as 681 enrolled students, while the actual number of students attending CAMST was approximately 100. The audit revealed that school executives received funds from CAMST without supporting documentation. The inflated enrollment and undocumented spending resulted in $3,646,821 in misspending.
Federal questioned costs in the amount of $336,775 were also issued for federal funding that could not be supported by documentation. The federal funding was related to the Public Charter School Subsidy Program, the School Breakfast Program and the National School Lunch Program.
Former school employees, Shirley Haynes and Mark Olds were indicted for criminal activities related to CAMST. Haynes was sentenced to 24 months in prison and three years probation after release. Olds was sentenced to 92 months in prison
plus 3 years probation after release. Both Haynes and Olds are required to pay restitution.
Mark Olds is a classic example and he fits the mold perfectly: (1) the world owes him something, (2) rules do not apply to him, only to you, (3) he is smarter than you, despite his G.E.D., and (4) he is out to land the big score.
80% of all inmates suffer from Anti-Social Personality. They cannot help themselves. I saw Mark Olds' pathology in the first chapter. He tried to blames his misfortunes in life on his poor, pathetic childhood. He "white-washed" his formative years by cleverly omitting his multiple rapes, pistol-whippings, and emotional victimizations. He says that he merely sold dope. Whatever!
Of course he laughed all the way to the bank when he was able to "con" the governor AND warden of Maryland that he was reformed. They released him into the hands of the Black Baptist community, which would be his next victim. Landing on his feet in Cleveland, Ohio, he was able to "con" Rev. Moss at the largest Black Baptist church in town, the Olivet Institute Baptist Church, that he was "sent by God." As he says in his book, he found himself on the same stage as Hillary Clinton without the slightest security clearance by the Secret Service or FBI.
All of this plays into the Anti-Social Personality, that no one seems the least bit interested in.
Let me fast-forward from 1995 or so to today. Mark Olds is presently in prison serving 7 years on 62 counts of mail fraud, money laundering, and tax charges. He founded a charter school in Cleveland, received $1.4 million from the state, never paid the teachers, never paid heating and utility bills for the school, and finally sold the school and kept the money. This was just another day at the office for a scam artist. Why? Because rules apply to YOU, not him.
Gregory A. White, United States Attorney for the Northern District of Ohio, today announced the unsealing of a federal indictment charging three individuals and five corporations with conspiracy, money laundering, and mail fraud in connection with their operation of a former charter school in Cleveland, Ohio, Cleveland Academy of Math, Science and Technology (CAMST). The defendants charged in the indictment are Reverend Mark C. Olds, age 56, of 38510 Flanders Drive, Solon, Ohio; Shirley S. Haynes, aka Shirley Gray, aka Shirley Robinson, aka Sandra Haynes, age 57, of 3897 E. 155th Street, Cleveland, Ohio; Timothy Daniels, age 47, of 801 South Copper Key, Gilbert, Arizona; CAMST; New Opportunity Development and Management Services, Inc. (New Opportunity); MCO Media Group, Inc. (MCO); The Haynes Group; and Academy Transport, Inc., all of which operated out of Cleveland, Ohio.
The indictment charges that between July 2001 and December 2003, the defendants conspired to defraud the State of Ohio Department of Education (ODE) out of approximately $2.2 million dollars in charter school payments that the State paid to CAMST. According to the indictment, Olds, Haynes, and Daniels established CAMST in July 2002 as a publicly- funded charter school and received approximately $2.9 million in grants and foundation payments from the State. The indictment alleges that the defendants submitted fraudulent monthly reports to ODE in which they inflated the number of students enrolled at the school, falsely reporting as many as 681 enrolled students, when in fact the number of students enrolled never exceeded more than approximately one hundred. CAMST was closed in November 2003.
The indictment charges that the defendants diverted funds from CAMST to their personal use by causing CAMST to enter into contracts with companies they owned and controlled, with the purported purpose of providing the school with services that were either not provided, not related to school business, or provided at costs far in excess of their market value.
The indictment alleges, among other things, that Olds, through his company New Opportunity, arranged for CAMST to enter into a lease agreement with the Second Ebenezer Baptist Church, located at 1881 East 71st Street in Cleveland, where CAMST held its classes for the 2002-2003 school year. According to the indictment, CAMST paid New Opportunity $14,000 per month plus a $10,000 security deposit to lease the church premises, of which Olds paid the church only $2,500 per month plus utilities.
http://cleveland.fbi.gov/dojpressrel/2006/charterschoolfraud091506.htm
http://www.dispatch.com/live/contentbe/dispatch/2007/02/15/20070215-D1-04.html
?Reform math? doesn?t add up, Dublin critics say
Thursday, February 15, 2007
By Simone Sebastian
THE COLUMBUS DISPATCH
Debate over a controversial math program in Dublin has been multiplied by test results showing that middle-school students there are struggling to divide.
For example, only 29 percent correctly divided 651 by 14 on a test the district administered in December. (The answer is 46.5.)
Last week, middle-school teachers began remedial instruction for students who hadn?t learned elementary-level arithmetic. Some board members and parents blame math programs instituted four years ago: Investigations in elementary schools and Connected Mathematics in middle schools.
The district?s 3,000 sixth-, seventh- and eighth-graders were tested on multiple-digit addition, subtraction, multiplication and division. Several questions assessed students? understanding of fractions, percentages and decimals.
On four of the 11 questions, at least half of the students got them wrong. Students did not receive a grade.
District administrators insist the results are anomalies because the students tested were the first to be taught with the programs.
"We can already see there are some real improvements" in younger students, said Superintendent Linda Fenner. "We have not fallen behind in educating our students in what they need to know."
Each of Dublin?s four middle schools is implementing an emergency plan to tutor students this school year. Some will take up to 20 minutes of class time to review basic computation. Others will give algebra students extra homework in division.
The debate in Dublin is part of a national storm over "reform math" programs, which were introduced during the 1990s as an alternative to rote learning.
Supporters say they encourage students to discover new ways of solving problems in real-world contexts. Critics say the programs leave children unable to do math without a calculator and unprepared for standardized tests.
For instance, the programs might teach students to divide 36 by 9 by drawing 36 tally marks and crossing them off in groups of nine. That method is supposed to help students understand how division works, but some parents say their children never learned easier ways, causing difficulty with problems such as 651 divided by 14.
Meeting the Mathematics and Science Teacher Shortage in Missouri: Research and Practice on Supporting Beginning Teachers
Sponsored by
University of Missouri-Columbia:
Missouri Center for Mathematics and Science Teacher Education (funded by USDE)
and
Alternative Teacher Certification Research Project (funded by NSF)
Center for Study of mathematical Curriculum (CSMC)
http://mathcurriculumcenter.org/st_std_exec_sum.pdf
The Intended Mathematics Curriculum as Represented in
State-Level Curriculum Standards: Consensus or Confusion?
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
WORKING DRAFT (April 14, 2006)
Prepared By:
Barbara J. Reys, Shannon Dingman, Travis A. Olson,
Angela Sutter, Dawn Teuscher, Kathryn Chval
University of Missouri
Glenda Lappan, Gregory V. Larnell, Jill Newton
Michigan State University
Ok-Kyeong Kim, Lisa Kasmer
Western Michigan University
Center for the Study of Mathematics Curriculum
Full Report to be published by:
Information Age Publishing Inc.
Greenwich, CT 06830
http://www.infoagepub.com
This report is based on the work of the Center for the Study of Mathematics Curriculum,
supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant No. ESI-0333879.
CENTER PARTNERS:
Michigan State University
University of Missouri
Western Michigan University
University of Chicago
Horizon Research, Inc.
Grand Ledge MI Public Schools
Kalamazoo MI Public Schools
Columbia MO Public Schools
Reys presentation in Taiwan about American Mathematics Education
http://www.math.ntnu.edu.tw/~tame/tameteachers/TJMT05.pdf
Horizon Research Inc = Iris Weiss (UNC, Chapel Hill, NC)
Reys, Lappen, and Weiss do a fair amount of collaboration
Connected Mathematics Field Test Evaluation
Michigan State University
HRI is conducting a study of the effects of the Connected Mathematics curriculum on student achievement in grades 6-8. The study examines both yearly and longitudinal effects over a three year time span. The study also includes an analysis of the effect of Connected Mathematics on various sub-populations of students
http://www.horizon-research.com/projects/current/
Collaborators - these names should start sounding familiar to people familiar with the movement.
Several of Horizon's projects have involved collaboration with universities and other research institutions such as:
Abt Associates, Inc.
Education Development Center
Eisenhower National Clearinghouse
National Center for Improving Science Education
North Carolina State University
Research Triangle Institute
TERC
The Ohio State University
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
University of Pennsylvania
WestEd
Westat, Inc.
Wisconsin Center for Education Research
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