Originally posted by: BaliBabyDoc
Originally posted by: LunarRay
I can't imagine going to school and not trying to get the most out of the time spent as possible. For this person the be Valedictorian and not pass the exit exam suggests both the school, student, and parents are a bit out of contact with reality...
Per the article, the child made multiple attempts to improve her mathematical acumen. Until someone provides evidence that she spent her evenings as a coke whore and slept through classes . . . it appears responsibility lies primarily with her instructors and school administrators.
She was Socially taught, not Academically taught. This is one of the reasons these new Test have been put in place. There are Bachelor degreed people sometimes with 2 degrees dumb as a brick. They're nothing but "Professional" students.
You don't have a clue. The faculty all but admit that she was moved along/received good grades in mathematics b/c she was a good kid. They didn't teach her anything about being a good citizen. She learned those talents in other environs and it paid dividends during her somewhat educative experiences at school. The "new" tests you refer to prove you know nothing about the various systems of accountability in America. Many school districts and states have instituted various means of accountability throughout the 1990s (not including states such as CA, IA, MA etc that were vanguards in standardized testing . . . NOT high stakes testing). High stakes testing is pure superfluous BS if it occurs outside of a holistic plan of action/resources for correcting explicit deficiencies within the system.
Education is still primarily a locally-controlled and funded endeavor but the edicts from DoEd (read Bushies) are not holistic and certainly lack a local perspective. Testing is always a burden but we do it in a limited fashion b/c
good tests properly utilized have value. We now have situation where testing in the locality is compounded with state-mandated tests and federally-mandated tests. It's excessive and by definition lacks utility b/c these tests do NOT expand the skill set of children . . . except to the extent instructors teach to the test format (and a certain extent content).
Position on High Stakes testing from the American Education Research Association
These various high-stakes testing applications are enacted by policy makers with the intention of improving education. For example, it is hoped that setting high standards of achievement will inspire greater effort on the part of students, teachers, and educational administrators. Reporting of test results may also be beneficial in directing public attention to gross achievement disparities among schools or among student groups. However, if high-stakes testing programs are implemented in circumstances where educational resources are inadequate or where tests lack sufficient reliability and validity for their intended purposes, there is potential for serious harm. Policy makers and the public may be misled by spurious test score increases unrelated to any fundamental educational improvement; students may be placed at increased risk of educational failure and dropping out; teachers may be blamed or punished for inequitable resources over which they have no control; and curriculum and instruction may be severely distorted if high test scores per se, rather than learning, become the overriding goal of classroom instruction.
) - the teachers admitted to it and you stated it in your post. They gave her good grades because she was a "good kid". Does it get more obvious than that? If she didn't pass the tests in class(there will be tests in Math class) then she doesn't get "good grades". So either she isn't a good test taker and the teachers let her pass anyway, or....nope that's about it from the info we have. Not only did they let her pass but they gave her good enough grades for her to become the valedictorian! If it was only Math then those teachers need to be fired - period. It wasn't clear if Math was her only "bad" subject for the exit exam or how she scored on the ACT in the other areas but seems to me that if you score an 11 you didn't do well anywhere. Hell I got a 17(or was it 19 - i'll have to dig it out) on the ACT when I was in 7th grade! 
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