I wish that I could get more excited about Tennessee's initiative to Test New Technology Aimed at Improving Test Scores. I consider this a sad day for Tennessee. We apparently are defining technology in education as an online system to measure how well our students are doing on standardized tests that prepare them to take more standardized tests. Please do not get me wrong, I am all in favor of providing teachers, administrators, and boards better management tools for tracking progress (or lack thereof) in our classrooms. If it makes life easier for teachers, then I am all in favor of it. But please do not fall into the trap of believing that this new tracking system will actually be used to improve any child's learning, particularly learning that might include technology.
If this is an effort to advance technology use by teachers and administrators, let's call it what it is: a new system to track progress in making our students better test takers.
You can count on the system to identify students who are just below the standards so that those students can be pushed up into a politically acceptable level...but I seriously doubt that all students will realize benefits from the new game.
To call this a "new technology" seems odd also. Govenor Bredesen himself is quoted as saying, "Businesses don’t rely on a single annual inventory to tell if they’re making a profit, and we shouldn’t be content with one high-stakes test to tell us that some of our children aren’t keeping up. This program not only tells us who needs help, but also how to help them." I agree with the govenor, in part...business management systems of one genre or another have been in place since the beginning of the industrial revolution...so why is this somehow a silver bullet, "New Technology"? (I am whining now).
I should be happy that the words technology and education are even used in the same sentence, I suppose. When those new test-taking-careers show up and dominate Tennessee's economy, we will have plenty of students qualified to apply.