Making the Rounds of other blogs

There's a lot of debate on whether we should test, how much we should test, when we should test, what we should test, etc. , etc.

I won't debate that. I'm looking at this from the point that we do test each year, a score is released and more, and more of the general population is making a decision based on the API score.

Given that I'm focused on finding resources to help students score better, by getting them, their parents, their teacher and their principals access to best practices, sample exams, and other means to score better.

The definition of how the API score is derived is not static across grades or years. You can find the complete definition for 2005-2006 school year here. If the state's site isn't clear enough try Edusource's pic charts on the different components.

Here you'll find the sample exams for the CST (English-Language Arts, Mathematics, History-Social Science, Science).

I haven't printed out every test, but I'd recommend every parent begin the process by printing out their kids grade level and administering the test to their kids.

Determine their weaknesses, discuss your findings with their teachers, and ask for advice on resources to help them score better.

If you want to know how your child school did on the CST's here's the test results site: CST test results

I'm starting this blog to focus on resources to help parents, teachers, principals (aka head teachers, those responsible for sharing best practices to other teachers) and students. To I'll refer back to my post at http://fremontrealestate.blogspot.com/2006/09/increasing-your-homes-value.html regarding the monetary reason every neighbor regardless of whether they have a kid in the associated school, should volunteer in some fashion to help improve the API score of kids in their neighborhood. Volunteering could mean participating in tutoring programs, asking kids how they are doing in school (taking an interest, will encourage them to take an interest), please remember getting a perfect API score, only means you are proficient at the basics, hardly a genius. So don't feel you are putting pressure on kids to be familiar with the basics. You can also volunteer by gathering info and spreading it. Please post innovative approaches to learning material or incentive parents, teachers and pupils. If you find proactive exams send me the links. Just like any exam, the more practice exams you take of it, the better you will score on the actual exam. President Bush's brother is trying to market something for $3800 a pop to help kids score better on standardized tests (http://www.pamspaulding.com/weblog/2005/01/no-child-left-behind-bush-family), which is deservedly getting a lot of bad press, because the president's brother is trying to make money of one of Bush's signature legislations. Actually haven't seen any review of how good his system is. However, if the game manufacturers got into the education game on the cover of creating home equity - that might be interesting.