Saturday, February 26, 2011

Conflict Between Budgets and Standardized Testing

Jason Song
State Education Officials Decry Funding Veto (http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/lanow/2010/10/state-education-officials-decry-veto-of-funding-.html)
L.A. Times
October 28, 2010

Summary: The Governator vetoed approximately $7 million that was supposed to go to a "student data tracking system" called CALPADS. Opponents of the veto claim that it could hurt California's ability to comply with federal regulations and create difficulties implementing the fan favorite value-added analysis at a state-wide level.

Intended Audience: General Public

Key Points: 1) The Governor vetoed a large sum of money intended to go toward the creation of an objective system of student assessment; 2) There is some debate over the proper way assess both students and teachers.

Relevance: Funding is a huge issue right now and so is teacher and student assessment. This article serves as an example of how the two interests can conflict with one another. Implementing systems of data tracking of student scores costs money. States must pay for servers, software engineers, test developers, etc. This all costs money--something that most states are in an extreme shortage of right now. It will be interesting to see how all of this plays itself out over the next few years. Do we go with more standardized tests, more "objective" assessment methods, and spend more money, or do we continue to cut funding for all areas of education?

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