Monday, July 27, 2009

Keystone Exams

The Morning Call has a feature article on the proposed Keystone Exams, which would effectively serve as final exams for students and must be passed to graduate (unless your district opts out).

Interesting concept in theory, but when you merge the beaucracies of the state goverment with the school system, I'd imagine it will result in a lot of people making money at taxpayer expense and a lot of work on the teachers to modify their existing curriculum to fit the new tests (http://www.mcall.com/news/local/all-5exams.6967863jul27,0,3737776.story).

What do you think? Should PA have a standard final exam that all students must pass in order to graduate?

1 comment:

NazoRanter said...

Ah yes, another "standardized test" for parents to get behind and cheer for. Another reason to stop really teaching and yet another test to teach to.

This is the PSSA Part II. Our school systems and government is doing nothing more than creating a bunch of drones that can fill in little circles.

Critical thinking, no, not a chance. Analytical skill, no way, don't need them to fill in a circle.

We are teaching our kids that there is always an A, B, or C answer to every question, not the possibility that the initial questions raises more questions.

My prediction is that this will become a requirement, and we will see parents cheerleading it because "we want our scores to be higher than XXXX Districts". We don't care that our kids can't think, they have good test scores.

That and $.50 will get them a cup of coffee.