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[windowlady]

Published on Friday, September 14, 2012 by Common Dreams
Standardized Tests for All Elected Officials
by Carl Gibson

Rahm Emanuel wants to cheapen education to make it conform to a standardized testing model. So how about we come up with standardized testing models to see how our do-nothing politicians measure up?

As long as do-nothing legislators demand teachers be held accountable to their approved version of a standardized test, all elected officials, from city council members and boards of selectmen, to mayors and state legislators, to members of the U.S. House and Senate and the presidency, should be held accountable to a citizen’s standardized test drafted by all of us. We’ll measure them on job growth, the rank of our education and healthcare systems, the ratio between rises in the cost of living as opposed to wage increases, the ratio between money spent on wars overseas as opposed to money spent on domestic services, the ratio spent on public school students as opposed to prisoners, CO2 emissions, air and water quality, taxes collected from those who owe, and job approval ratings, for starters.

According to the standardized test we just drafted, all members of Congress would immediately be ineligible for re-election, as they have held as low as a 9% approval rating in the last year, and job growth has slowed to a trickle largely due to Congress’ failure to act on job creation bills, like the American Jobs Act in Fall of 2011. And seeing as our Pentagon budget has surpassed $700 billion, which greatly outnumbers the money spent by Uncle Sam on environmental protection, education and job training, Congress gets a big fat F in the spending category. They would also unequivocally fail in the CO2 emissions category in their failure to address climate change, deny a cap-and-trade program, and their continued push for the disastrous Keystone XL pipeline project.

Any state government that has ignored revising their tax code to crack down on individual and corporate tax dodgers in favor of cutting schools and other budgets across the board is thus failing in the categories of both job creation, tax collection, domestic spending, and education rankings. To really boost their grades, they would have to shift the tax burden from the poor and middle class to the wealthy, properly fund schools and public health programs, and allocating more dollars to public transportation to encourage hiring on things like rail projects. Environmental grades and job creation grades could boost as well by allocating money for making homes and buildings more energy-efficient.

If legislators wanted to boost their grades in CO2 emissions and water/air quality, they would have to cease fracking operations that pollute water supplies, coal mining practices that pollute the air, and replace those forms of energy with more sustainable means, like solar, wind, geothermal, and hydroelectric power. If state lawmakers want their job approval ratings to go up, they should see to it that more money is spent on students, and less on prisons. An easy way to manage that would be to decriminalize or legalize marijuana.

You know, this standardized testing thing for legislators seems like a great way for us to hold them accountable, and a great way for them to stay elected by making sure they pass the test. Just like we do with school students, we’ll administer the test each year. Except instead of giving the test in the Spring, we’ll give the test one week before election day. And any elected official that gets an F on the citizens’ standardized test shouldn’t be re-elected.
Carl Gibson

Carl Gibson, 25, is co-founder of US Uncut, a nationwide creative direct-action movement that mobilized tens of thousands of activists against corporate tax avoidance and budget cuts in the months leading up to the Occupy Wall Street movement. Carl and other US Uncut activists are featured in the documentary "We're Not Broke," which premiered at the 2012 Sundance Film Festival. He currently lives in Old Lyme, Connecticut. You can contact Carl at usuncut@gmail.com, and listen to his online radio talk show, Swag The Dog, at blogtalkradio.com/swag-the-dog.

[GEEZER]

A lot of this guys ideas may sound great...impractical as all get out....but the perfect dream for a 25 year old ACTIVIST.....heck I was a hippie at one time too!

(Carl Gibson, 25, is co-founder of US Uncut, a nationwide creative direct-action movement that mobilized tens of thousands of activists against corporate tax avoidance and budget cuts in the months leading up to the Occupy Wall Street movement. Carl and other US Uncut activists are featured in the documentary "We're Not Broke," which premiered at the 2012 Sundance Film Festival.)

You think he might just be a "liberal loonie" also.....ME thinks so! I like the idea of holding them accountable....but his test questions are a little (LOT) skewed,
and a lot he doesn't GET when it comes to energy, for instance.
Most energy produced is powered by steam...nuke, natural gas, oil, coal...to produce steam to turn turbines.....YES?
His answer.....hydroelectric.....ooops you gotta build a dam....and flood land with his precious one legged horney toads on that land.....and you have to flood a lot of land....kill his trees....drown his piping plovers............oh that's right....it creates "wet lands" for him to protect.....
He just hasn't lived long enough to be really very smart....educated maybe...but "dumb as a box of rocks"
oh, the article did say he is big into occupy movement.....says a lot!
You know that thingy....."what you do, speaks so loudly , that what you say, I can't hear"

[Jackson3]

Standardized Tests needs Standardized Children.Start breeding USA.

[keepitreal]

You want accountability?? ...standardize test politicians...

[GEEZER]

TEACH THE SUBJECT......NOT THE TEST

There should be a comprehensive test to find out how the TEACHERS are doing..........not the students.
Teachers should be held accountable for teaching certain subjects to a certain level (at least)
All the correct answers for ALL the tests given in each subject NATIONWIDE, should be entered into a database..then the kids tested with questions picked at random by a computer.....then find out how well the teachers are doing their job. The computer has the ability to make up the math questions......so did the teacher do their job actually educating those kids. Did he (she) teach the student the "subject"??? or, are they teaching the "TEST"
Those that teach the subject should be retained and paid accordingly....if the teacher failed at their job....then fired and replaced.
The teachers should be the ones that have to pass a standardization test (how well did you teach, graded by how well did your students do on that test)...the question is, are they meeting the "standard" of a real teacher, if they do, they are priceless!

[keepitreal]

Agreed GEEZER...as long as the students that don't bother to show up everyday are factored out of the results...

[GEEZER]

KIR. gotta fix that....you are right.
Something along the line of enforcing the truancy rules and laws already in effect....
If they are not gonna come to school...throw them out of the schools, they are just a nuisance anyway...
and we will probably be feeding and bedding them before long in our prison system...it won'tcost us anymore to do it earlier than later.
That way they go ahead and become a "non-factor"