Saturday, April 14, 2012

Gov. Jerry Brown calls for less testing


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"California’s Jerry Brown, who has gone further than any other governor in blasting modern test-based school reform, said Wednesday that he wants to reduce the number of standardized tests students take, give more authority to local school boards and design a system to measure education performance that is less test-centric than the one now in use.
Brown, in his State of the State 2012 address Wednesday, expanded on sentiments he expressed last October in a message explaining that he was vetoing an education bill because it relied too heavily on standardized tests for high-stakes accountability purposes.
Wednesday he said students take too many standardized tests, and that the results are given too late for teachers to get much use out of them. He also said that state and federal governments have too much power when it comes to making decisions about education and that he wants to return some to local school boards."