SCHOOL POLICIES ON CELL PHONES

The school district I am involved has a collective goal for the students to reach when they take the ACT college entrance test.  The collective composite score for the school should be 21.  Some of the students in  the surrounding schools have reached and surpassed this composite score goal for their school.  The teachers in my school, for the most part, would like to have cell phones and electronic items banned from the school building.  But the policy is students can use their ipods and cell phones in the hallway, common areas and lunchroom.  This is no matter if class is on or not.  Once a student is out of a classroom, electronic items can be used, no matter the time of the school day.  I reviewed the student discipline policies for the surrounding schools which had met our set goal for the composite ACT goal.  Their cell phone and electronic policy is zero tolerance.  No cell phone or ipod is to be visible or used during the school day, period.  When I related this information the comment came forth that unless further survey and data was collected there could be no correlation made between policy and the results for the ACT test.  That was not my intention.  My comment in return says my thought on the matter, 'if you wish to eat like a cheetah, run like a cheetah after cheetah food.'

STANDARDIZED TESTING

There seem to be too much standardized testing of the student in the USA public school system.  I must say, there is too much standardized testing without any intervention improvement for each student as follow-up to the testing.  The tests seem to be conducted for the sake of data collection only.  There is no improved learning by a student from taking a standardized test.  There seldom exist an individual student improvement plan stemming from the student results on a standardized test.
I shall always remember the words a fellow educator said once concerning too much standardized testing, 'it is like trying to fatten the cow by weighing it every day.'