k12.chat.teacher just had a long thread on this article. I am
snipping out the other issues to deal with them separately,
but... this article is misleading in terms of the issues.
See below.
On Mon, 11 Aug 2003 16:05:01 -0400, Pulver <redlen@gta.igs.net> wrote:
Subliterate School Superintendent
by Joanne Jacobs
Wilfredo Laboy, superintendent of Lowell, Mass. schools, has flunked
the state literacy test. He's flunked three times.
This part is true.
"What brought me down was the rules of grammar and punctuation,"
Laboy said. "English being a second language for me, I didn't do
well in writing. If you're not an English teacher, you don't look at the
rules on a regular basis."
And if you want a copy of the test he failed, you may see that the
test (while I agree that he should be able to pass it) is not so
basic.
It should be "were" in the first sentence.
No, actually that is not correct. In English, the word it What was
not What were here. The word was agrees with the begining
of the sentence not with the plural rules of grammar and
punctuation. Look it up.
jewishworldreview.com/0803/jjacobs.html
Laboy, who receives a 3 percent pay hike this month that will raise
his salary to $156,560, recently put 24 teachers on unpaid
administrative leave because they failed a basic English test.
Note here. The teachers he put on leave were teachers who
were teaching bilingual education under alternative certification
and who had been identified as non-fluent in spoken English.
The test was not the same one that Mr. Laboy failed, but a
different test entirely on a much more basic level.
Also note that by law he had no choice but to suspend these
teachers. OTOH, teachers who did not pass the certification
test that he took were not suspended and have the same
several years to retake and pass the test. This is probably
because there is a shortage of teachers in the district.
Now, I think he should have to pass but the issue of suspending
the teachers is actually not connected. He had to suspend them
according to the law and these were teachers who had been
identified as not being able to teach English immersion because
of their oral language, not because of their writing originally.
State law requires all teachers, principals and superintendents to
pass the literacy test, but doesn't specify how many chances
Laboy has to pass.
The article is misleading. The test he needs to pass is not the
same one the teachers who were suspended were given.
The teachers failed a test of basic oral English fluency. In other
words, they don't speak English well enough to communicate
with a room full of students.
He failed a different test that is not so basic. Still he should pass
it given his position.
These tests tend to be very basic. I find it hard to believe he
couldn't pass on the second or third try, if not the first.
From Bob LeChavalier
Despite what the newspaper says, the test does NOT measure
"basic" skills, nor does it *claim* to be a "basic" test.
http://www.doe.mass.edu/mtel/faq/about.html#6
Here is the test preparation booklet (the last half or so is
specific to the test; the first half is boilerplate).
http://www.mtel.nesinc.com/PDFs/MTEL_fld01TIB.pdf
It certainly isn't an easy test. With the many open response
questions, it is harder than the SAT I, and I think the
Massachusetts writing test is harder than the SAT II (since it
has multiple kinds of essays and open-ended responses),
and the multiple choice questions are at least as difficult.
Here is an SAT reading question:
http://www.collegeboard.com/student/testing/sat/lc_one/practice/prac_cr.html
and this describes the SAT-II writing test:
http://www.collegeboard.com/prod_downloads/sat/satguide/SAT2_WR_LT_US_WH.pdf
and here are some GRE questions:
http://www.gre.org/practice_test/takerc.html
and this discusses the GRE writing test:
ftp://ftp.ets.org/pub/gre/awintro.pdf
--
Dorothy
There is no sound, no cry in all the world
that can be heard unless someone listens ..
Outer Limits
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