Really, it's true. As Alfie Kohn points out....all the things that "school reformers" are demanding are already going on. They just want more of the same and want it done more strongly and more quickly.
Beware of school "reformers"But groups with names like Democrats for Education Reform—along with many mainstream publications—are disconcertingly allied with conservatives in just about every other respect. To be a school “reformer” is to support:
* a heavy reliance on fill-in-the-bubble standardized tests to evaluate students and schools, generally in place of more authentic forms of assessment;
* the imposition of prescriptive, top-down teaching standards and curriculum mandates;
* a disproportionate emphasis on rote learning—memorizing facts and practicing skills—particularly for poor kids;
* a behaviorist model of motivation in which rewards (notably money) and punishments are used on teachers and students to compel compliance or raise test scores;
* a corporate sensibility and an economic rationale for schooling, the point being to prepare children to “compete” as future employees; and
* charter schools, many of which are run by for-profit companies.
Which of the above is not going on already? If you said none, you are correct. All of them are happening.
To call it reform is senseless. They should not be saying we want more of that done, and want it done now or you don't get stimulus money for education.
Well, to be fair this article by Alfie Kohn was written in December before Arne Duncan was picked to be Secretary of Education. But all of it is true. It's already happening. The administration is riling teachers' unions already...demanding more of what is already going on.
Don't call it reform, Arne Duncan. Reform means change.
More:
Arne Duncan, whose all-too-apt title is “chief executive officer” of Chicago Public Schools, and his counterpart in New York City, former CEO and high-powered lawyer Joel Klein. Duncan, a basketball buddy of Obama’s, has been called a “budding hero in the education business” by Bush’s former SOE Rod Paige. Just as the test-crazy nightmare of Paige’s Houston served as a national model (when it should have been a cautionary tale) in 2001, so Duncan would bring to Washington an agenda based on “Renaissance 2010,” which Chicago education activist Michael Klonsky describes as a blend of "more standardized testing, closing neighborhood schools, militarization, and the privatization of school management." Even before NCLB, Duncan boasted, "Chicago took the initiative to hold students accountable to annual state assessments" and to get "back to basics with our curriculum, aligning it to the state academic standards all the way down to optional daily lesson plans."
Duncan’s philosophy is shared by Klein, who is despised by educators and parents in his district perhaps more than any superintendent in the nation (see Lynnell Hancock, "School’s Out," The Nation, July 9, 2007) In a survey of 62,000 NYC teachers this past summer, roughly 80 percent disapproved of his approach.
Duncan even wants to use stimulus money for a testing database to
tie teachers to students' tests.Part of the stimulus money, he told Sam Dillon of The New York Times, will be used so that states can develop data systems, which will enable them to tie individual student test scores to individual teachers, greasing the way for merit pay. Another part of the stimulus plan will support charters and entrepreneurs.
It turns out that Duncan, like the Bush administration, adores testing, charter schools, merit pay, and entrepreneurs. Part of the stimulus money, he told Sam Dillon of The New York Times, will be used so that states can develop data systems, which will enable them to tie individual student test scores to individual teachers, greasing the way for merit pay. Another part of the stimulus plan will support charters and entrepreneurs.
Let's see...more testing, more top-down prescriptive teaching where teachers are told what to teach, more rote learning, more rewards and punishments, corporate involvement, and more charter schools.
That is just more of the same, it is not reform.
They should not be allowed to call it educational reform.
And I wonder why so few parents stand up to the constant testing of their children, to the pressures of the rote nature of learning now. Do they think it is change because someone told them it was?
Do parents understand that the testing industry is one of the least regulated industries around? They don't have to tell parents or teachers anything in most cases, using the excuse that it would jeopardize their test security.
This is high stakes stuff that will have an effect on a child's future. I remember an article from several years ago...finally found it.
THE Capriciousness Of High Stakes TestingIn June, 2002, the New York Times reported that New York Regents Exams altered literature passages on its tests according to "sensitivity guidelines."<1> Some of the changes were ludicrous, some merely stupid, and some would lead testtakers to the wrong answer. The state promised it would never do it again, but as the Times' Michael Winerip found, the censorship and bowdlerization is still going on. How the Department got caught and other aspects of the affair were detailed in "The Twelfth Bracey Report on the Condition of Public Education," Phi Delta Kappan, October, 2002. More important for this essay is a sentence in Winerip's article that draws attention to another problem with tests--passing or failing can turn on a single item.
..."A statement buried in the 15th paragraph of Michael Winerip's "How New York Exams Rewrite Literature (A Sequel)<2>" deserves to be brought center stage. Winerip wrote "In the world of make-or-break exams, one question scored incorrectly can make all the difference in a student's future." To people unfamiliar with the technology of testing, Winerip's words probably look like hyperbole. They are not.
We who have worked in the field of testing have known this for some time, but the capriciousness of high-stakes testing entered public discourse only because of Martin Swaden, a Minnesota parent.
Minnesota requires students to pass a test in order to obtain a high school diploma. Swaden's daughter failed. Swaden reasoned that the best way to help her next time round was to look at the test and his daughter's answer sheet to see what kinds of questions were giving her trouble. The state denied his repeated requests to see them, yielding only when he threatened to sue (he's a lawyer, giving the threat some credibility).
Matching his daughter's answer sheet against the key containing the officially right answers, Swaden discovered that the testing company, NCS Pearson, mis-scored six questions, enough to put his daughter over the top.
More from the Capricious article from 2002.
Indeed, one wonders how many other errors already lie undetected in computer files because parents from other states have not pressed to see how the tests match their children's answer sheets. They should. No one else will. Swaden won without litigation in Minnesota. A Florida parent had to sue to see her daughter's answer and. Florida Governor Jeb Bush fought the suit claiming that letting parents see their children's answer sheets would cost the state too much money. He lost.
...."The testing industry is perhaps the largest unregulated business in the nation. There is no FDA of testing to stamp the tests for quality or make sure that the tests won't poison anyone. Legislators, governors, and boards demand accountability from teachers and school administrators, even though they only have control over their "products" for a few hours a day, half the year. Test companies have total control over their products. One wonders when they will be held accountable. Minnesota and Florida have made starts, but only after determined parents forced the issue. Parents in all other states should take heed.
An incident happened in my fourth grade class that I will never forget. It may be one reason I am so adamant about using testing as the sole source of judging students and teachers.
I had one student who was head and shoulders above all the others in creative writing skills. I had submitted his stories to a magnet school, and his talent eventually got him admitted. One of my students would just write anything, never check spelling, never proof read.
It's a long story, but when the writing part of the FCAT was returned to us...it was shocking.
The student who was a master in writing, in all areas of it, made a low score. I had seen him writing the essay, so had my aide. The writing was superior in every way. The student who just put weird things on paper that made no sense got a very high score. It looked like scribble.
The good writer put his head down on his desk, and nothing we did could cheer him up. The other was gloating.
There was nothing to be done. Both the aide and I, assisted by the parents, asked for some resolution of the issue. Nothing was ever done. There were other instances, but that one sticks out because of the injustice involved.
When I write about public education, I do so because it is my passion. I don't do it to "hurt" Obama, but I do it to question the wisdom of his pick for Secretary of Education. Arne Duncan wants more testing of students, he wants databases built to make it easier to judge the teachers by those tests of the students.
When I write about it, I get criticized. But I think this country is intelligent enough to realize that there is more to being a good teacher than teaching to a test, and there is more to learning than filling in bubbles.
Printer-friendly format
Email this thread to a friend
Bookmark this thread
(1000+ posts)
Send PM |
Profile |
Ignore
