Illinois drops writing from standardized exam

Illinois drops writing from standardized exam

www.wlsam.com

CHICAGO (AP) - Illinois will assess only reading and arithmetic now that high school juniors will no longer be tested on their writing skills during standardized exams every spring, according to a published report.

Cutting the writing exams will save about $2.4 million amid the state's budgetary shortfalls. Writing tests for elementary and middle school students were dropped last year.

Federal law doesn't require or fund writing tests.

(visit the link for the full news article)

Is it really shocking that companies and people leave these poorly run states and that employeers seek off-shoring deals to get quality work done?

As an employer, writing skills are not only absolutely critical, I would argue the most critical skill required to be successful, easily as important as reading and mathematics. Poor written communication has a direct reflection on the intelligence of the person in question (undoubtably in many cases an inaccurate reflection) and poor written communication directly leads to poor work process and rework. Poor written communication is the #1 cause of termination and failure to advance in my industry. I don't have the time to teach someone how to write a coherent sentence.

Instead of seeking to cut a vital educational component, how about looking to reform the schools. How about looking to cut fat out of the state budget? The savings here are meaningless and certainly not worth the damage to the local community over the short or longer term.

There will be two shocks as a result of this - the performance of the schools will improve - they will improve because they will no longer factor in results of the reading tests. The other will be that more folks will leave the public school system, either by seeking out private schools, home schooling options or simply moving.

We have a federal government that wants to pay for everyone's college tuition. Great - they will be able to spend their freshman year taking remedial courses and graduate in 5 years or so.


www.wlsam.com
(visit the link for the full news article)

As a person that may hire someone some day, I'll give them a piece of paper and a pen and have them write me an essay on why they need to be hired.
No spell check.
No grammar check.
Just a pen and a piece of paper.

(yes, I know, I'm an evil @$#!%#$ )

Seems like were are slowly but steadily making our way to idiocracy

reply to post by beezzer


U shud hier mi bcuz i am hardworkin & loial 2 mai employr.

That's what you will get.
For your own sanity, don't do it!

reply to post by beezzer


I wonder how many of these essays will be written: U rly need 2 hire me bc, ect.

This is just ridiculous!

Great, that is one less thing we have to worry about in the problem of education in the U.S. today.
I have only one question though, Why did they stop there? I mean, we do have calculators right, lets save another $.25/child (/sarcasm)

It has been a while since I was in school, lets see if I can remember the short list...

Reading, Writting & Arithmatic.

Yup, it's on there.

Originally posted by beezzer
As a person that may hire someone some day, I'll give them a piece of paper and a pen and have them write me an essay on why they need to be hired.
No spell check.
No grammar check.
Just a pen and a piece of paper.

(yes, I know, I'm an evil @$#!%#$ )

I'm from Illinois and I'm a writer, this sickens me to no end! How can they cut writing, yes I can write without spell check only using a thesaurus for other words.

reply to post by [davinci]


Writing directly shows a person's ability to grasp and communicate complex thought. Its more than grammar and spelling. By putting content down on paper you are forced to use complex rules of language as well as demonstrate understanding of the material at hand and compose original thought. It is a far higher level of thinking than the level of math they test for in high school.

Someone can read and get the drift of the passage without reading well. You can not mask an inability to write effectively which is why they put the kibosh on it.

There is no way you can be even moderately successful in college without being able to write well. This is a huge disservice to these kids.

Who needs to learn to write in order to flip burgers
Teaching is ultimately the parents responsibility.

If you want your child to learn then teach them.

I would ask anyone to read my signature....

"That's all I have to say about that." (voice of Forest Gump).

My son got a letter in the mail yesterday from the University of Illinois. They will give him $36,000 in scholarship money to attend their school if his SAT score is over 1,320. Sounds easy right? Well just below the score it says that they are only interested in the combined math and English score. They don't use the writing portion of the SAT for scholarship consideration. Really, they don't care if you made a 0 in writing.

Illinois on the whole seems to be dropping the writing part of academics even on the college level.

Originally posted by beezzer
As a person that may hire someone some day, I'll give them a piece of paper and a pen and have them write me an essay on why they need to be hired.
No spell check.
No grammar check.
Just a pen and a piece of paper.

(yes, I know, I'm an evil @$#!%#$ )

You will likely end up with employees that write nice but have zero common sense in the real world. Be careful what you wish for.

reply to post by dolphinfan


That was my point...writting is #2 on the big three list

The entire purpose of education is, at it's most basic, to teach a person how to read and write, and do simple math. As another poster said, math skills have been replaced by calculators, reading is being replaced by non-language-specific pictograms and now writting is going to be pushed to the side too?

Two generations and we are ready for true serfdom again.

If this isn't indication of a serious push to dumb down the public I don't know what is. I feel for the kids, because they will go on into their lives feeling like they have accomplished something, when in reality their graduations are without true substance. When they reach college (the ones that attend), most will drop out. So how will this play out? With industrial/manufactoring jobs becoming non existant and a good portion of our youth not having a clue about regional, national and global affairs, where do we stand?

reply to post by no time


Did your parents teach you how to read? Were you home schooled?

As a writer I hate that.... Writing is such an important part of our lives. Well, on the bright side, maybe we will have a bunch of new great writers... Great because they develop their own styles, rather than follow the books.

That said though, we should just get rid of Standardized tests all together. in Texas, the Tax test is used to determine funding for the schools. The more ids pass at this school. the more money you get.

So what this causes is that you start teaching them only about what will be on the test.... Not about what they truly need to now....

I feel very strongly about education in this country as you can tell.

Oh, not that big of a deal!!

Great to see this in a bastion for Democrats.
Go Go Illinois!!!.

Is there anyone here, older than 40 years old, that actually ever had writing on a standardized test? I sure didn't. In fact i didn't take a standardized test until the SAT in high school. Standardized testing is a fairly new thing, which has had it's share of vocal opponents on this board and in the public realm. i would think, in the whole, this would be viewed as a good thing. I never recieved better than a c and many times lower in my writing classes through graduating college and I have done ok for myself. My writing is anything but superior but I do manage to get the message acrosss most times.

For instance i could care less if my writing on this board contains little i's , etc. i have two thumbs when typing so the caps just never seems to catch right when i hit it. Not worth my trouble to fix it. Same goes for the spelling, last letter of one word appearing at the front of the next word, etc. If it becomes unreadable, i fix it, otherwise i leave as a puzzle for you ATS'ers to figure out. call me lazy, because i am.

reply to post by dolphinfan



What difference does it make. All the good jobs have been moved to countries that still value education, teachers and learning and actually provide money to education rather than cutting it.

I'm not surprised, but still saddened by the slide into intellectual mediocrity that has come to typify this once proud country.

Anyway, Cannon fodder doesn't need to know how to do anything except follow orders.