A Response to the Times

Judy Rabin posts this letter to the Times on the "new science of education" espoused by SMU's new school for test score improvement:

To the Editor:

As a graduate student in education at Monmouth University in
West Long  Branch, New Jersey, I am currently taking a course in
qualitative research. The  Bush-style education for teachers being
instituted at South Methodist University is a dangerous affront
to the future of education in this country that has  serious
implications for a democratic and free society.  The exclusive 
emphasis on quantitative  research built into the No Child Left
Behind Act is an ideological assault on  the equally important
qualitative research practices integral to other forms of 
scientific inquiry that can shed light on critical 
consequences of education  policy.

This narrow view of  “scientifically-based research” as
defined in NCLB, threatens educational  opportunities for
students because it does not take the whole child or the 
critical significance of a broad-based curriculum into 
consideration. The very  real effects of educational
techniques and practices cannot be discerned simply  by
analyzing numbers, statistics and test scores.  Secretary of
Education  Margaret Spelling’s call for an overhaul of teacher 
preparation and  accountability should be viewed with great
trepidation byanyone who cares about  the psychological,
emotional and intellectual well-beingof our nation’s
children. 

Judy Rabin