"A child's learning is the function more of the characteristics of his classmates than those of the teacher." James Coleman, 1972

Monday, January 29, 2007

America's Schools of Institutionalized Child Abuse

A clip from the NY Post:
January 28, 2007 -- For a month, third-graders at one Brooklyn elementary school had only two social-studies lessons.

Their teacher said she was too busy teaching kids test-taking strategies.

"The kids can't tell you who the president was during the Civil War," she said. "But they can tell you how to eliminate answers on a multiple-choice test. And as long as our test scores are up, everyone will be happy.

"That's education?"

The teacher, who requested anonymity, said she was ordered by her principal to "forget about everything except test prep" over the four weeks prior to this month's statewide English tests.

"All anyone cares about now are test scores," she lamented.

Since the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 brought high-stakes testing to the nation, city teachers have complained that statewide tests and test preparation have dominated class time. Now, they say, the situation is getting worse.

With Mayor Bloomberg's announcement of plans to crack down on tenure, teachers fear test scores will become even more important than other performance indicators.

They also fear the focus on tests will grow as a city science test for grades 3 through 8 debuts in 2007-08 and a city social-studies test arrives for the same grades in 2008-09. Currently, only two grades take those tests.

"My students haven't done science or social studies since three weeks before the ELA [English language arts] exam," said Jennifer Giovinazzo, a fourth-grade teacher at PS 14 in Staten Island who attended a forum on testing last week.

"We did one period of science today, and I had to review everything we learned from before the reading test," she said. "That took the whole period. Nothing new was learned."

She said her students get prep during lunch and aren't getting additional classes like art. "The kids don't even know what a crayon is," she said.

Another teacher called it "institutionalized child abuse." . . .


1 comment:

  1. Anonymous9:21 AM

    Public school teachers are definitely feeling the pressure to get their students ready for tests. After all, their jobs are on the line, and they are often dealing with students who are fed up with testing and just don't care. When my son was in private high school, he was amazed that his friends in public school had to pass a test in order to receive a diploma. His teachers were free to teach the curriculum without having to worry about state mandated tests.

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