John Bestor
Posted inCT Viewpoints

State should heed changes in SBAC testing

by John Bestor

As Connecticut students get ready to take the Smarter Balanced Assessment tests, the time is now for parents to let their children’s teachers and principals know that they are sick and tired of test-centric programming. Smarter Balanced test results do not reflect their children’s learning and cannot be trusted as a meaningful measure of student growth, progress, or proficiency.

Posted inCT Viewpoints

Mastery exam task force report due soon — its findings ‘predetermined’

by John Bestor

In a few days the Mastery Examination Task Force will be submitting its Final Report and Recommendations to the Connecticut Legislature’s Education Committee which had asked for a study of student assessment practices in our public schools. Having monitored the progress of this task force during its one-and-a-half years of meetings, I contend that their findings were predetermined at or even before the task force began its deliberations.

Posted inCT Viewpoints

State board of ed must scrutinize charters more independently

by John Bestor

The Connecticut State Board of Education will meet on tomorrow morning, Sept. 7, to kick off the new school year. One of the issues held over from the previous board meeting is contract approvals of two charter (school) management organizations [CMOs]. Given two months to review the evidence presented by state Department of Education officials tasked with recommending approval, the CSBE must determine whether there is sufficient evidence to ensure honesty and transparency in this use of public resources. However, with mounting evidence of questionable practices, corruption, and theft involving many charter schools and their charter management organizations across the country, it is the responsibility of state education officials charged with protecting students, parents, teachers, and taxpayers to ensure that similar questionable (and often illegal) practices are not taking place in our state.

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Cost of SBAC testing in Connecticut is unconscionable, unnecessary

by John Bestor

Education activists have been speaking out and pushing back against the misguided Common Core State Standards and the flawed Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium (SBAC) statewide test protocol for several years now, as they have become more aware of the billionaire-driven, media-complicit, and politically-entrenched “corporate education reform” agenda.

Posted inCT Viewpoints

CT Mastery Exam Task Force has unique opportunity to fix assessment system

by John Bestor

The Connecticut legislature’s Mastery Examination Task Force has a unique opportunity to design and determine a Connecticut Assessment System that can meet the needs of our students, satisfy their parents, and inform student learning for teachers while – at the same time – fulfilling the state’s obligations under the Every Student Succeeds Act.

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The SAT: Should Connecticut students opt out, or not?

by John Bestor

Last year, hundreds of 11th-grade students across Connecticut refused to take the mandated SBAC test.  Knowing that they had no control over independent-minded 11th-graders, the governor and State Department of Education sought a waiver from Washington, D.C., for permission to offer what they hoped would be a more palatable test: the SAT. It is a test […]

Posted inCT Viewpoints

Connecticut’s lawmakers must see through the ‘edu-profiteers’ and testing mania

by John Bestor

I can’t begin to tell you how frustrating it is, as a public school employee and practicing school psychologist, to have federal legislation written that continues to allow our students to be assessed by an unproven and invalid standardized test process and also enables the charter school industry to take funds allocated for public school students and divert them to their own private business interests.