Movie "Freedom Writers" Promotes Dangerous Myths

A real live inner-city school teacher tells it like it is today in the New York Times when it comes to the dangerous myths perpetuated by Hollywood in movies like Freedom Writers. While the ongoing problems of poor working conditions, low pay, lack of respect plague the profession, teachers are expected to be miracle workers and heroes in a failing system. A system that leaves millions of children behind in wretched, underfunded, understaffed schools located in war zones. Unless the real problems of real teachers and real students are addressed eventually there will be no teachers left, period.

Every year young people enter the teaching profession hoping to emulate the teachers they’ve seen in films. (Maybe in the back of my mind I felt that I could be an inspiring teacher like Howard Hesseman or Gabe Kaplan.) But when you’re confronted with the reality of teaching not just one class of misunderstood teenagers (the common television and movie conceit) but four or five every day, and dealing with parents, administrators, mentors, grades, attendance records, standardized tests and individual education plans for children with learning disabilities, not to mention multiple daily lesson plans — all without being able to count on the support of your superiors — it becomes harder to measure up to the heroic movie teachers you thought you might be.

It’s no surprise that half the teachers in poor urban schools, like Erin Gruwell herself, quit within five years. (Ms. Gruwell now heads a foundation.)

I don’t expect to be thought of as a hero for doing my job. I do expect to be respected, supported, trusted and paid. And while I don’t anticipate that Hollywood will stop producing movies about gold-hearted mavericks who play by their own rules and show the suits how to get the job done, I do hope that these movies will be kept in perspective.

While no one believes that hospitals are really like “ER” or that doctors are anything like “House,” no one blames doctors for the failure of the health care system. From No Child Left Behind to City Hall, teachers are accused of being incompetent and underqualified, while their appeals for better and safer workplaces are systematically ignored.

Every day teachers are blamed for what the system they’re just a part of doesn’t provide: safe, adequately staffed schools with the highest expectations for all students. But that’s not something one maverick teacher, no matter how idealistic, perky or self-sacrificing, can accomplish.

Tom Moore, a 10th-grade history teacher at a public school in the Bronx, is writing a book about his teaching experiences

Parents Fighting the Testing Frenzy

This is exactly what it will take to tamp down the current abusive orgy of tabulation in schools:

Some Richmond public school parents say frequent testing is interrupting their children's education.

"I am concerned about the onslaught of assessments in Richmond Public Schools," said Fox Elementary School parent Mary Boyes, adding that she was particularly bothered by the testing of students from kindergarten through second grade. "I question the frequency and types of assessments our children are being given."

Speaking at a School Board meeting Tuesday night, more than two dozen parents called for reduced testing. In addition to annual state tests, Richmond students take a number of other tests throughout the year that aren't required by the state.

"My wife and I were naive," said Evan Davis, also a Fox parent. He said he knew his daughter would take Standards of Learning tests when she reached third grade. "We didn't know that as a 5-year-old she would also encounter nine-week and biweekly tests."

Because the students are at all different reading levels, the teacher has to test them one at a time, which causes the testing to drag on for days, Davis said.

"Quite honestly, there wasn't a whole lot of learning going on during that period," Davis said.

Wendy Martin has two children in Richmond schools.

She said she is not against assessment but noted that her first-grader's class includes students who are reading at all different levels and must constantly stop their lessons for testing every other week and every nine weeks.

"Every two weeks, these kids are getting a language-arts assessment determining where they are," Martin said. "It's wasting the time of the kids who are at the sixth-grade level. It's wasting the time of the kids who are still learning their ABCs."

She and other parents said that some of the purchased tests are poorly designed and would be better if Richmond teachers wrote them. Martin also noted that she considered moving from the city, in part because of the emphasis on testing, and knows of other families who feel the same way.

"You need to know, where the rubber meets the road, this is having an impact," she said.

Richmond Education Association President Wade Ellegood said the union surveyed its members about testing and that it plans to present the results to the School Board's curriculum committee Jan. 29.

"The board is listening to this concern," said School Board Chairman George P. Braxton II.

Also Tuesday night, the coordinator of school health services, Charlene Rodgers, said that seven sixth-graders have yet to receive their mandatory vaccines for tetanus, diphtheria and pertussis and have been suspended from school.

State law required all public school sixth-graders to have the immunization by early December or be kept out of school. Irving C. Jones Jr., executive director of secondary education, said that the school district has been unable to locate the parents of three of the remaining seven students. The parents of the other students will be taken to court, he said.

Contact staff writer Lindsay Kastner at lkastner@timesdispatch.com or (804) 649-6058.

Dodd, Kennedy, and a New Surge for the Testing Juggernaut

The cries from students, parents, teachers, school boards, and academics during the past five years of NCLB war on schools have proven that Democrats are as tone-deaf to education issues as any other group of nitwits. And why wouldn't they be--most of the Dem kids are going to the same private schools as children of their opponents across the aisle. No chili supper fundraisers or coupon books among this group.

Let's face it--Dodd, Kennedy, Miller, and most of the other "Democrats" don't give a rat's posterior section about public education, the abusive use of testing, the stupidifying of America's non-elite children, or the privatization of public schools. And now both Kennedy and Dodd have bills in the Senate to prove it.

While Dodd's bill goes so far as to use extensions for NCLB targets and sanctions to "incentivize" states to "voluntarily" adopt national testing, Kennedy's bill is proposing more chairs for business and the military at the "preparedness councils" that will determine what gets taught and tested in school. Talk about a cancerous growth of the military-industrial complex!! Now we can rename it the miltary-industrial-educational complex.

Here is a clip from the Olson piece in Ed Week:

Congress is considering two new bills that aim to increase the rigor of state standards and tests by linking them to those set at the national level.

The SPEAK Act (SB 224, HR 325), or Dodd-Ehlers bill, would:

• Require the governing board for the National Assessment of Educational Progress to create voluntary U.S. education standards in mathematics and science for grades K-12 and ensure they are internationally competitive.
• Provide competitive grants to states that adopt the standards. Those states would align their tests in math and science, as well as teacher licensure, preparation, and training requirements, with the new standards.
• Permit the U.S. secretary of education to extend the 2014 deadline for states to get all students to the “proficient” level on state reading and math tests under the No Child Left Behind Act by up to four years.
• Provide bonus grants for states that fulfill the grant requirements to develop data systems that can track individual student performance over time.
• Require NAEP to test science, as well as reading and math, in grades 4, 8, and 12 every two years and require states getting NCLB school improvement funds to participate in such tests for students in grades 4 and 8.

The SUCCESS Act (SB 164), or Kennedy bill, would:

• Require that NAEP revise its standards and tests to ensure that they are internationally competitive. At 12th grade, NAEP also would have to assess whether students are prepared for college, the military, and the workforce.
• Require the U.S. secretary of education to identify states with the biggest gaps in student performance on state and NAEP tests. States could ask the NAEP governing board for help in analyzing those gaps.
• Provide $200 million for state grants to set up P-16 preparedness councils, with members of the education, business, and military communities, to align state standards with the skills needed in college and the workplace.
• Provide up to $75 million for state consortia to establish common standards and tests that are rigorous, internationally competitive, and aligned with postsecondary demands.

SOURCE: U.S. Congress

At least Kennedy and Miller can no longer hide behind the excuse of being in the minority. With control of both Houses, the question remains as to whether the Dems will sacrifice the future of American K-12 education for the short-term benefit of appearing bipartisan, at least, on something. To call these pieces of dreck compromises is to give "compromise" a really bad name. Calling it idiocy would be closer to the truth.

Saving Recess

Good reporting in the Toledo Blade on the effort to save recess from the testing hysteria:

Jonny Plasencio bundled up and braved the cold with his Ottawa River Elementary classmates for the one routine most of them probably look forward to the most.

"Without recess, we'd be kind of mad," the fourth grader said. But new government figures show some schools and school districts nationwide are cutting back or eliminating recess for elementary school students, particularly as they get older. . . .

Merit Pay and the Flawed Research That Buys It

A couple of years ago the Walton Foundation was able to buy their own shop at the University of Arkansas to churn out propaganda to support the type of conservative education agenda that would make all of America Walmart employees or Walmart shoppers--or both. As Chair of the new department paid for with $20,000,000 of Walton money, who else--Jay P. Greene, who has manhandled and simmered more statistical data for the Manhattan Institute than you can shake a graphing calculator at.

This is background, then, for this post at the Arkansas Blog, which offers the skinny on a new research products manufactured by Greene and Co. just in time to kick off the big campaign there for merit pay based, of course, on test scores:

The merit pay train leaves the station from the state Capitol at 2 p.m. tomorrow, when faculty members at the University of Arkansas present an evaluation of merit pay experiments in the Little Rock School District. (Noted: The UA is a major recipient of Walton Foundation money. The department doing the evaluation is a major recipient of Walton money. Walton money is promoting merit pay, charter schools and other "reform" all across America. Walton money is supporting the merit pay experiment in the Little Rock School District, with notable aid from Democrat-Gazette publisher Walter Hussman.)

The finding: No surprise here. Merit pay holds promise. More experimenting and testing are needed.

Pardon my sarcasm. Suspicion naturally arises from the multiple connections and the fact that the publicly financed UA refused our FOI request for this report since last Thursday. The report was provided to certain insiders -- supporters of the program -- and one of them was kind enough to supply a copy to us today. Secrecy about this project has been a black mark on the effort from the start.

I'll put the verbatim executive summary on the jump. The meat comes later, in test score comparisons between two schools using merit pay projects (Wakefield and Meadowcliff) and three not using them (Base Line, Chicot and Franklin). But I'm unable to post that data at the moment. There is, however, very little in the way of apples-to-apples comparison of student test scores. In the end, because of a number of variables, the only true comparison is how fourth- and fifth-grade students at one school, Wakefield, performed on a math test, compared with an average from three non-merit-pay schools. Another flaw, in my view, is that the two merit pay project schools -- with about 80 percent minority student bodies -- are compared against an average score of three schools with differing demographic makeups, including one, Franklin, a virtually all-black school with very low scores. I don't see group-to-group comparisons of individual student advancement -- among poor students at a merit pay school vs. poor at a single comparable school, black vs. black, non-black vs. non-black These schools happen to fall in an area where an interesting demographic difference may be emerging based on some recent data -- the relatively strong performance of the rising Hispanic population, particularly versus black students -- and I'm not sure any thought has been given to that.

Teacher opinion surveys produced a finding that teachers at merit pay schools didn't think they worked harder or more innovatively than other teachers, but they found a more positive atmosphere. Yes, they liked higher pay.

It is a shame that the presentation won't be rolled out in a true open forum. It should have been peer reviewed and distributed to those with differing viewpoints in time for study and informed questioning. But this is a political and public relations process at work tomorrow, with academic researchers as props.

Losing Black History, All History

A nice piece by SusanG at Daily Kos:

One of the few things I’ve always assumed united conservatives and liberals in this country is a desire to pass on the American story to the next generation. Of course, there are often different reasons for this desire. Conservatives tend to view the founding of this country and the glorification of its heroes as a priori evidence of American exceptionalism and carte blanche to act without owing the world an explanation . I think liberals are more prone to point out American ideals – and what people have risked to attain them – as remarkable goals for which to strive. We tend to take these rigorous standards seriously and be vocal whenever we see them violated.

Given this shared goal of ensuring our past is known to future generations, the following Washington Post article is discouraging, to say the least, particularly so because the students in question are at college level:

In a recent survey of college students on U.S. civic literacy, more than 81 percent knew that the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. was expressing hope for "racial justice and brotherhood" in his historic "I Have a Dream" speech.

That's the good news.

Most of the rest surveyed thought King was advocating the abolition of slavery.

It’s not just a critical understanding of Martin Luther King Jr.’s legacy that is suffering. In fact, educators interviewed in the article say that because the civil rights battle falls into the range of more recent history, it’s actually easier to teach. No, young Americans are woefully ignorant on a number of fronts.

Many of the 10 federal holidays have become little more than days off school or work, even if they are dedicated to significant Americans, such as Abraham Lincoln and George Washington. Many people have no idea what Labor Day commemorates, educators say.

"Honestly, I never knew what Veterans Day was until last year," said Taneisha Rodney, 14, a ninth-grader at William E. Doar Jr. Public Charter School for the Performing Arts in Northeast Washington.

Given the right-wing’s insistence on demonizing multi-culturalism and advocating a smooth transition for immigrants (and one would hope our American-born youth) into the "melting pot" of shared values, you’d think the Bush administration would advocate doing everything within its power to promote knowledge of this country’s history, the basis for its federal holidays and the personal stories of the heroes – even collectively, as workers or veterans – that are so honored. You would be wrong.

In many schools across the country, teachers say social studies has taken a back seat under the federal No Child Left Behind law, which stresses math and reading. Squeezing history into the curriculum can be difficult, educators say, and taking time out of a scheduled lesson to use a federal holiday -- even King's -- as a teaching moment can be tough.

The constraints imposed by NCLB, according to educators interviewed by the Post, are leading to rote teaching, with little depth and no substance. Experts point out, for example, that most students are familiar with the "I Have a Dream" speech of King’s from years and years of repetition, while the seminal "Letter from Birmingham Jail" is rarely taught.

"One of the raps on elementary social studies is that it is all about heroes and holidays, and with standardized testing, it often becomes that," said Andrea S. Libresco, an education professor at Hofstra University in New York who teaches prospective teachers how to use the holidays as teaching opportunities. "People tend to concentrate on English and math."

So on this day when we honor King, it’s important to also review the legacy of George Bush and his punitive education policies, which seem to be leading to historical ignorance on a disquieting scale. How can we continue to honor and model our own citizenship to our higher ideals if social studies is left behind? Are the accounts of risks taken, courage displayed, tyranny resisted, injustice challenged – all complex events embedded in the contemporary cultures of their times, difficult to test beyond dates and names – are we willing to jettison all this in the name of "standardization?"

Is the story of America and its heroes doomed to become The Greatest Story Never Told?

High-Stakes Testing as New Tool for Old Repression

In the dark days of the Jim Crow Era, racists were inventive in their use of various tactics to make sure that the Negroes continued to live second-class lives in squalor and deprivation, while continuing to provide a cheap, dependable labor force. Besides being taught that they were morally inferior and, thus, unfit to participate in public life, the white Establishment devised various impossible tests that blacks had to surmount if they showed the audacity to try to exercise their Constitutional guarantee and to participate in the normal activities of white citizens:

Blacks were denied the right to vote by grandfather clauses (laws that restricted the right to vote to people whose ancestors had voted before the Civil War), poll taxes (fees charged to poor Blacks), white primaries (only Democrats could vote, only Whites could be Democrats), and literacy tests ("Name all the Vice Presidents and Supreme Court Justices throughout America's history").

By the 1920s, racists and eugenicists like Lewis Terman and Robert Yerkes had devised a "scientific" test to demonstrate intellectual inferiority to go alongside the accepted view of moral inferiority. Segregation, then, became a "scientifically-based" survival strategy that aimed to avoid the contamination of the white race that would surely occur if race mixing were allowed.

Nowadays we have a much more subtle and sophisticated system to assure that the poor, the brown, and the black remain in their repressed states. The new literacy test (the MEAP, the LEAP, or the CHEAP) is much like the old ones in that it guarantees failure for the disenfranchised. It is quite different, however, in that the new literacy tests are given at an early age, rather than to uppity adults trying to exercise the rights reserved for whites.

Children are now labeled as failures as early as kindergarten and taught failure long before they get a notion of what might constitute success. They are taught order and obedience, to work hard, be nice. They are taught that learning is work, work, learning. They are taught that learning is rewarded with candy, toys, or other worthless consummables. They are told the big lie that if they try hard enough and work hard enough that they can do anything, thus guaranteeing the crushing of esteem and an accompanying sense of self-loathing when all the pie-in-the-sky promises don't materialize, despite their efforts that are doomed by the poverty they don't understand.

Now the present-day racists, unacknowledged though they are, are planning a new, even more impossible slew of national tests based on the NAEP, to be accompanied by robust data reporting systems that make sure the guaranteed failure rates in poor communities can be posted as warning signs for those who would avoid the contamination of the failed, dark residents of these communities. Not only will these new test score placards keep wealthier families out, but they will serve just as clearly as the signs above the Blacks Only water fountain to delineate the boundary for those maturing youngsters who are learning at an early age to accept their failure, to abandon hope, and to forget the Dream that today, we, ironically, celebrate.

Civil rights attorney, Thomas Todd, was in Greenwood, Mississippi last week to commemorate Dr. King. Here are some clips:

Although young blacks today have some of the trappings of freedom, it's a college education that will truly uplift them, civil rights attorney Thomas N. Todd said Wednesday.

Todd was the keynote speaker at Mississippi Valley State University's Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Convocation.

King's Birthday, Jan. 15, is a national holiday.

Todd said that January, named after the Greek god Janus, is a time to look backward and forward.

"When we come to celebrate Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s birth, we must look backward and forward at the same time," he said. "If you don't know about where you come from, you don't know where you are and you sure don't know where you're going."

Todd criticized the country's military operations in Afghanistan and Iraq and said although blacks have served this country, they were not free.

"In World War I, black soldiers were lynched in uniform right here in Mississippi. In World War II, white prisoners of war, who fought against America, were treated better than black soldiers that fought for America. These wars are everybody's wars, but they are not for everybody's freedom," he said.

"One hundred and fifty years after the Dred Scott decision, 144 years after the Emancipation Proclamation, 142 years after the 13th amendment, 139 years after the 14th amendment, 137 years after the 15th amendment, 53 years after Brown v. the Board of Education, 52 years after Montgomery, and 42 years after the Voting Rights Act, blacks in America are still not free," Todd said.

"We're somewhere between liberation and servitude, we're still not free," he said to loud applause.

Todd, 68, widely known in civil rights circles as "TNT" for his dynamic presentations, is a native of Demopolis, Ala.

Todd said blacks must know the history of signs in the Deep South - that although "White" and "Colored" signs are no longer present, new signs have taken their place.

Take standardized testing for students from kindergarten through 12th grade. "Are they based on sound educational principles or just new signs? Are they just the new literacy test?" Todd asked.

The income gap between blacks and whites and the disparities in health care are other indicators that discrimination is still present in American society, he said.

Education, specifically college education, will help remedy some discrimination, but young blacks must be wary of "knockoff freedoms" - freedoms that sound good but are false and misleading, Todd said.

Civil rights has advanced education for blacks, he said: "If education won't free you, it will give you the tools."
. . .

Jacques Derrida, Pat Robertson, and Frosty Hardison Join Forces

It wasn't so long ago that skeptics of the postmodern turn lay claim to the paradoxical argument that all knowledge claims are relative, a strong statement that could obviously be true only if it were false. Such a glaring logical contradiction was not enough, however, to keep dogmatists of all brands from becoming apoplectic that there could be a challenge to the notion of Absolute Truth, even though those claiming to be in charge of the Truth often attacked or were attacked by others equally sure of having quite a different version of what, otherwise, remained Unchangeable and Unvarying. You might say that if truth can set you free, then t absolute truth can get you killed.

Since Truth is dependent upon values and beliefs that function to direct our moral conduct, facts often become unpopular among Truth holders, particularly when facts offer evidence that challenge the Truth of those who have confused or conflated their Truth (based on values and beliefs) with the empirical certainty of facts. Since those who harbor the Truth cannot use their belief alone to counter the facts that they find dangerous to the underpinning of their Truth, they convert their values, their beliefs, into false facts and then insist that they be given equal weight to the true facts that are derived from observation and experimentation, rather than being derived from a desperate cobbling together of pieces of broken faith.

This is, indeed, the situation we find ourselves in today, where Believers' facts, which are extrapolated from beliefs, vie for postion next to the facts derived from 500 years of modern science. Witness the re-emergence of the controversy surrounding the science of evolution.

With the help of right-wing political ideologues, however, we have gone one step further than the religious fundamentalists have taken us, so that now facts are now not challenged by a faith-to-fact transformation of the standard creationist variety, but, rather, facts, themselves, the ones based on observation and experimentation, are given the same previously-privileged place of faith. This gift, if you will, has less advantage for the empirically-grounded than it does for the holders of Truth, whether that Truth be religious, moral, or political--or all three. For when facts become a belief, then Truthholders are no longer required to go through the cumbersome and often-embarrassing machinations of fact manufacture. They simply have to disagree with what has been converted to another version of the Truth and then insist that their real Truth be given equal time with the one held by those who happen to believe in the facts.

Thus, the fundamentalists and the uniculturalists and the advocates of the one-Party system have come much closer in just a few short years to the ultimate relativism than ages of committed solipcists, angry anarchists, and posturing postmodernists: the Karl Roves of the world stand to inherit an epistemological relativism that will make those who control power the ultimate keepers of Truth--where propaganda is given the same stage as facts, all in the name of free speech. And the consolidation of media continues.

Here is an example from today's news that shows the current denigration of fact through its elevation to truth for political purposes--perhaps Gore should have chosen a better title--something like An Inconvenient Fact:

This week in Federal Way schools, it got a lot more inconvenient to show one of the top-grossing documentaries in U.S. history, the global-warming alert "An Inconvenient Truth."

After a parent who supports the teaching of creationism and opposes sex education complained about the film, the Federal Way School Board on Tuesday placed what it labeled a moratorium on showing the film. The movie consists largely of a computer presentation by former Vice President Al Gore recounting scientists' findings.

"Condoms don't belong in school, and neither does Al Gore. He's not a schoolteacher," said Frosty Hardison, a parent of seven who also said that he believes the Earth is 14,000 years old. "The information that's being presented is a very cockeyed view of what the truth is. ... The Bible says that in the end times everything will burn up, but that perspective isn't in the DVD."

Hardison's e-mail to the School Board prompted board member David Larson to propose the moratorium Tuesday night.

"Somebody could say you're killing free speech, and my retort to them would be we're encouraging free speech," said Larson, a lawyer. "The beauty of our society is we allow debate."

School Board members adopted a three-point policy that says teachers who want to show the movie must ensure that a "credible, legitimate opposing view will be presented," that they must get the OK of the principal and the superintendent, and that any teachers who have shown the film must now present an "opposing view."

The requirement to represent another side follows district policy to represent both sides of a controversial issue, board President Ed Barney said.

"What is purported in this movie is, 'This is what is happening. Period. That is fact,' " Barney said.

Students should hear the perspective of global-warming skeptics and then make up their minds, he said. After they do, "if they think driving around in cars is going to kill us all, that's fine, that's their choice."

Asked whether an alternative explanation for evolution should be presented by teachers, Barney said it would be appropriate to tell students that other beliefs exist. "It's only a theory," he said.

While the question of climate change has provoked intense argument in political circles in recent years, among scientists its basic tenets have become the subject of an increasingly stronger consensus.

"In the light of new evidence and taking into account the remaining uncertainties, most of the observed warming over the last 50 years is likely to have been due to the increase in greenhouse gas concentrations," states a 2001 report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which advises policymakers.

"Furthermore, it is very likely that the 20th-century warming has contributed significantly to the observed sea level rise, through thermal expansion of seawater and widespread loss of land ice."

The basics of that position are backed by the American Meteorological Society, the American Geophysical Union, the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the National Academy of Sciences.

Laurie David, a co-producer of the movie, said that this is the first incident of its kind relating to the film.

"I am shocked that a school district would come to this decision," David said in a prepared statement. "There is no opposing view to science, which is fact, and the facts are clear that global warming is here, now."

The Federal Way incident started when Hardison learned that his daughter would see the movie in class. He objected.

Hardison and his wife, Gayla, said they would prefer that the movie not be shown at all in schools.

"From what I've seen (of the movie) and what my husband has expressed to me, if (the movie) is going to take the approach of 'bad America, bad America,' I don't think it should be shown at all," Gayle Hardison said. "If you're going to come in and just say America is creating the rotten ruin of the world, I don't think the video should be shown."

Scientists say that Americans, with about 5 percent of the world's population, emit about 25 percent of the globe-warming gases.

Larson, the School Board member, said a pre-existing policy should have alerted teachers and principals that the movie must be counterbalanced.

The policy, titled "Controversial Issues, Teaching of," says in part, "It is the teacher's responsibility to present controversial issues that are free from prejudice and encourage students to form, hold and express their own opinions without personal prejudice or discrimination."

"The principal reason for that is to make sure that the public schools are not used for indoctrination," Larson said.

Students contacted Wednesday said they favor allowing the movie to be shown.

"I think that a movie like that is a really great way to open people's eyes up about what you can do and what you are doing to the planet and how that's going to affect the human race," said Kenna Patrick, a senior at Jefferson High School.

When it comes to the idea of presenting global warming skeptics, Patrick wasn't sure how necessary that would be. She hadn't seen the movie but had read about it and would like to see it.

"Watching a movie doesn't mean that you have to believe everything you see in it," she said.

Joan Patrick, Kenna's mother, thought it would be a good idea for students to see the movie. They are the ones who will be dealing with the effects of a warmer planet.

"It's their job," she said. "They're the next generation."

Will the NEA Help Parents Learn What Teachers Know?

In some new survey research, TAKS, the Texas Miracle, is not fairing well among teachers:

AUSTIN – More than three out of four teachers believe the Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills does not accurately measure a student's academic level and is turning students into test takers rather than critical thinkers, according to a study released Thursday.

The random telephone survey, paid for by a teacher group and conducted by a University of Texas researcher and a Houston research firm, found that teachers and parents share negative views about the TAKS and the way the high-stakes exam is being used in public schools, although parents' views were generally less strong.

For example, a solid majority of teachers and parents – more than 60 percent – said the TAKS has reduced learning to how well a student can take a test.

However, there was a divergence of opinion when the groups were asked whether the TAKS is increasing the overall quality of the state's education system. Roughly three-quarters of parents agreed that it is, while three-quarters of teachers disagreed that the test is helping.

"The results suggested that neither teachers nor parents want to return to the days of no assessment or accountability. But both teachers and parents suggested the system has swung too far from one extreme [no testing or accountability] to another [too much testing and accountability]," said an analysis of the survey results.

The education of parents by teachers on abusive testing remains a critical element in quashing this stupidifying testing scheme. If the NEA suits were attuned to what their membership already knows, rather than making backroom deals with the education privatizers, perhaps they would be using their power and expertise in helping teachers to educate parents on the dangers of testing to their children. Once teachers and parents start to speak with the same knowledgeable voice, this testing hyteria and child abuse will come to a screeching halt.

The Broken Rhetoric of Sec. Spellings

From the Home Tribune News:

As I was driving to Perth Amboy the other morning, I was listening to a radio report about the fifth anniversary of the "No Child Left Behind" program.

It was apropos, because I was on my way to the McGinnis School on State Street to appear at a career fair for seventh- and eighth-graders.

I have a tendency to say "yes" to any invitation that comes from Perth Amboy, and especially from the school district, and I especially like going to the McGinnis School, where nearly 40 years ago I went as a reporter to cover meetings of the city's Board of Education.

Talking to pupils at McGinnis is a lively experience.

Some of them go through the motions — gathering only the required information — but many of them seem to have the reporter's bent themselves, asking questions like, "What time do you get up in the morning?" and "How much money do you make?" and "Do you regret staying in the same job for 40 years?"

While I'm sure some of them raise hell when they get the chance — as kids that age will — I am always struck by how courteous they are when they approach the visitors to their school.

All of them say "thank you" when they're through asking their questions, and many of the boys offer their hands.

I get a kick — and a little education — out of watching them interact with each other and with the teachers and guidance counselors who stroll the gym among them.

And I must say I think wistfully about their futures.

No Child Left Behind is a noble ambition, and I'm sure the program by that name was established with the best intentions — and I imagine it's having a positive impact at least in some school districts in the country.

But programs like that tend to approach public education as a kind of vertical structure, as though the academic progress of youngsters like my friends at McGinnis can be improved by measures taken only within the institution.

Unfortunately, education is a horizontal structure. In the lives of many children, progress depends at least as much on what happens outside the institution — especially at home — than on what happens in the classroom.

The radio report I heard the other morning included clips from a speech by Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings in which she repeated the premise that the American "public-education system is broken."

Generalizations like that in a country this size are always suspect — and probably can't be supported — but I would challenge it even on a particular level.

I don't believe, for example, that the education system is broken at McGinnis or in the Perth Amboy school district as a whole.

What's broken is the lens through which public authorities look at the education of kids. It's a lens with a narrow focus that doesn't permit bureaucrats to see that setting performance standards in school, without seriously addressing economic and social issues that the best teachers in the world are helpless to control, is a method sure to fall short of its goals.

Charles Paolino is executive editor of the Home News Tribune. Contact him at (732) 565-7210; cpaolino@thnt.com.