my point in this conversation, though, has never been that there was some golden age when kids were smarter and public education better.
what i'm wondering now is whether we think that teaching to standardized tests in elementary and secondary schools is a good thing, a bad thing, both, or neither. and all that regardless of what or where education ever was before. am i really on such shaky ground, here?
j
On Monday, October 20, 2003, at 02:17 AM, Michael Pollak wrote:
>
> On Sun, 19 Oct 2003, Doug Henwood wrote:
>
>> [Bill Resnick] said that the right likes to peddle the declining
>> school
>> standards argument as part of their war on public education, and
>> evidently it's working.
>
> http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-vo-
> gardner4oct04,1,2347889.story?coll=la-headlines-oped-manual
>
> October 4, 2003
> Los Angeles Times
>
> History Lesson: Schools' Golden Age Is a Myth
> By Walt Gardner
>
> Walt Gardner taught for 28 years in the Los Angeles Unified School
> District and was a lecturer in the UCLA Graduate School of Education.
>
> With the fall semester underway across the country, it won't be long
> before critics of public education emerge again to wax nostalgic about
> the
> better schooling of the past. These sentimentalists yearn for a return
> to
> the golden age of education, when we were proud of our schools and what
> they accomplished.
>
> The trouble is that there never was such an educational Eden. Ever
> since
> public schools have existed in this country, they've been the subject
> of
> complaints that sound very much like those heard today. A fast rewind
> through the decades serves as an instructive lesson.
>
> As early as 1845, criticism of public schools centered on, of all
> things,
> standardized test scores. The first standardized test in the United
> States
> was administered in Boston to a group of elite students known as brag
> scholars. Despite their storied reputation, only 45% of these test
> takers
> knew, for example, that water expands when it freezes. Horace Mann,
> Massachusetts' secretary of public instruction, was so distressed by
> their
> performance that he berated schools for ignoring higher-order thinking
> skills in favor of rote memorization.
>
> In 1909, Ellwood Cubberly, dean of the Stanford School of Education,
> bemoaned the inability of American students to function in an
> ever-more-
> interdependent world economy. He believed that this shortcoming posed a
> threat to the nation. During World War I, more than half of Army
> recruits
> were unable to write a letter or read a newspaper with ease, prompting
> officers to question the job that schools were doing.
>
> The National Assn. of Manufacturers charged in 1927 that 40% of high
> school students couldn't perform simple arithmetic or accurately
> express
> themselves in English. It decried the burden these deficits imposed on
> employers.
>
> In 1943 the New York Times designed a social studies test, which it
> gave
> to 7,000 college freshmen nationwide. Only 29% knew that St. Louis was
> on
> the Mississippi River. Many thought that Abraham Lincoln was the first
> president. The Times concluded that its test results reflected the
> shoddiness of instruction, which focused on low standards and
> expectations.
>
> But nothing came close to matching the attack of "A Nation at Risk" in
> 1983. The Reagan administration-commissioned report alleged that "a
> rising
> tide of mediocrity" characterized public education. It vastly overrated
> the threat to our economy's preeminence, as time has shown, but its
> conclusion is still recited as a mantra by many otherwise knowledgeable
> people.
>
> What these persistent charges underscore is that dissatisfaction with
> public schools is nothing new. What is different today, however, is the
> thinly veiled hostility that pervades the latest attack in the form of
> the
> No Child Left Behind Act of 2002. Despite its noble-sounding title, the
> Bush administration's basic educational initiative goes far beyond its
> historical counterparts in its punitive approach. It contains a series
> of
> nonnegotiable demands that are impossible to meet even under ideal
> conditions.
>
> By far the most draconian is the provision that by 2014, 100% of
> students
> at any public school must be proficient in reading and math on
> state-developed tests, or the school faces a takeover. If any subgroup
> --
> such as non-English-speaking or handicapped students -- falls short,
> the
> entire school is declared to be failing. It makes no difference if the
> school has distinguished itself in any other way, including college
> acceptance rates. All that matters are scores on standardized tests.
>
> At no time in American history has this goal been achieved.
> Nevertheless,
> the law is being promoted as the only way to get back to the days when
> schools were paragons of academic excellence. When was that?
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>