The President could fire him - but somehow I don't see that happening.

by usurping state and local governments' rights to dictate curriculum. The feds aren't supposed to do that at all.

That according to Diane Ravitch.

That's only one of his many violations.

Cabinet members as well as federal judges CAN be impeached and removed.

After allowing Charter schools to take money from the inner city, hurting what chance minorities had to get an education, what cause shis fall was that he finally offended suburbia. It is like having to send Al capone to jail for Tax Evasion, a welcome result, but not even close to justice.

We're not teaching them. We are merely training them to take tests.

Great point! It's the fact and it's been going on for years.

The problem is that many of the new tests are written in a way that make them unteachable-to without teaching what the tests are supposed to test.

My favorite science question just had a simple question. But to answer it you had to know
how to read a piece of equipment
the equation involved for the "law" involved
what each of the symbols meant in real terms
how to find proportions
how to reason about that "law" in terms of proportions

And even then the answer choices were pictures. You had to pick the coil (in this case) that contained the right values to answer the question. In other words, that calculator was useless.

If you looked at the required standards you'd have found each of those things listed. The old test would have probably just given numbers and asked kids to plug-and-chug to find the answer. Or asked, "Faraday's law involves ..." with a series of choices. You can get to the answer given the equation that was provided--use the test to pass the test. Or you can say, "Heck, I can't solve for x. I'll just plug each of the answers in the equation until I get a number I recognize" and let the calculator do the thinking for you.

The first year this kind of test was given the passing score for at least one subject was 38%. 13 points above random chance. Over 40% of the kids failed--they didn't know 13% more than random guessing would have gotten them. The next year the passing score was higher, but teachers had a clue and started teaching better. Still, the fail rate didn't fall.

You say in your first sentence that the tests actually test what students are learning, but you describe it as a problem. Isn't that what we want.

Even so, the most useful test format is essay. There is no purely objective test that allows an instructor to see just how well the students understand the material. I've been in grad school for over 2 years now (history, Arabic language) and except for short-answer language tests, every assignment calls for a type-written essay of at least four pages. When teaching undergrads, the requirement is for shorter in-class handwritten essays or short (maybe three pages) typed for at home projects. The problem we have with the undergrads is that, while they may know the material (or not) they cannot seem to express themselves in writing.

What a horrible Ed Sec he is. Ugh.