The Long (and Sometimes Expensive) Road to the SAT

The Long (and Sometimes Expensive) Road to the SAT - New York Times:

"MARK KROESE, of Medina, Wash., spent more than $2,000 on SAT test prep classes, books and tutoring for his son Daniel. Mr. Kroese said the tutor deconstructed the test format, taught Daniel logical strategies and pacing, and gave him confidence."

This article raises two important questions.

1. Do test preparation courses provide an unfair advantage for children of well-to-do parents leaving poor children behind?
2. What ethical questions arise as a result of test preparation?

Regarding the first question, the answer appears to be obvious. Those that can afford these expensive courses appear to have a clear advantage over those who can't. Is that advantage limited to being able to afford expensive courses? I think not. The advantage of the rich over the poor in school goes far deeper than that. Issues of school funding, the design of curriculum, standards and assessment all favor the middle and upper classes at the expense of the working and welfare classes in the United States. The advantage extends largely to white students leaving students of color struggling to achieve in school. John Dewey argued that the real worth of the advantaged is how they are willing to support public education for those less advantaged then they are. In Dewey's mind, all citizens are entitled to a fair shake at learning.

Ethical questions abound with regard to test preparation courses. The issue of advantage over disadvantage is one that separates the class structure in America. The question of unfair advantage is an ethical issue with which we have not yet come to grips. Additionally, the question as to whether test preparation is cheating can be raised. What about the competitive nature of college preparation? I could go on but I will stop here.

George Hillocks writes in The Testing Trap: How State Writing Assessments Control Learning (Language and Literacy Series (Teachers College Pr)) that tests tend not to align with standards and are inherently unfair. Nicholas Lemann's The Big Test : The Secret History of the American Meritocracy presents a vibrant historical view of the American obsession with testing while addressing issues of class division.

Zoundry

Technorati : assessment, cheating, class, culture, democracy, education, ethics, performance, policy, politics, poverty, race, testing
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7 deadly books? Talk of ban hits burbs

"A northwest suburban high school board member seeks to ban seven books from classroom use because she thinks the profanity, depiction of graphic sex, and drug and abortion references in the literature are inappropriate for teenagers.

"Leslie Pinney admits she only read passages of the controversial selections, including Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse-Five and Toni Morrison's Beloved, which were on the American Library Association's 100 most challenged books list between 1990 and 2000."

I am particularly disturbed by the second paragraph of this story--the one in which the censor, Leslie Pinney, admitted to having only read parts of the books she wishes to ban. Censorship, book banning, what's next? Shall we return to the days when, in order to publish anything one had to have the blessing of the Church? Shall we burn the books of certain authors, of specific religions, orientations or points of view? What does Ms. Pinney think of parental intervention, of parental responsibility? What if I don't share Ms. Pinney's sense of moral outrage? Book banning is a slippery slope from which only dark consequences emerge.

7 deadly books? Talk of ban hits burbs:

Zoundry

Fahrenheit 451

Technorati : censorship, democracy, free speech
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Academic Blacklist Gets an 'F' for Factual Errors

We live in extreme times. When diversity of thought and the free expression thereof is not tolerated by a free and democratic society we risk plunging into a new "dark ages" where thinking is regulated by those for whom certainty is absolute. The problem with certainty is that it is not open to rationality. Certainty demands blind obedience to what is known to be true rather than be burdened by having to examine one's beliefs. What is problematic is that mainstream booksellers like Barnes & Noble place books like David Horowitz's The Professors: The 101 Most Dangerous Academics in America on the shelves as if it presents a well-researched stab at some kind of "truth."

"We think of blacklists as something out of the 1950's McCarthy red-baiting era. But a new report by Free Exchange on Campus highlights how recent attacks on university professors for exercising their freedom of speech in the classroom are eerily similar to that decade of ruined reputations (and lives).

"In Facts Count, Free Exchange analyzes David Horowitz's The Professors: The 101 Most Dangerous Academics in America, a diatribe published earlier this year by the extremist Regnery Publishing. Regnery is the same group that packages its most recent bit of bombast, The Politically Incorrect Guide [P.I.G.] to Women, Sex and Feminism, as feminist lies finally revealed, and was behind the pre-2004 election screed, Unfit for Command, which attacked John Kerry and his three Purple Heart awards."

AFL-CIO Weblog | Academic Blacklist Gets an ?F? for Factual Errors:

Zoundry

Animal Farm and 1984

Technorati : censorship, culture, democracy, free speech, politics

What will you do to be heard?

Whenever someone asks, "What can I do?" My general response is to join the professional discourse. Teachers have an obligation to make their professional voices heard on all issues regarding their professional lives. Debra Craig is doing just that. She is angry about the thoughtless political approach to education that is imposed on American public schools by No Child Left Behind and she is going to do something about it. I say hooray for Debra. So the question remains, just what will you do to enter the debate? To make your voice heard?

"High school teacher, author, and education advocate Debra Craig will be traveling 3,000 miles to Hartford, Connecticut to give her two minutes worth on why NCLB is bad for public schools with it's obsession on raising test scores and not looking realistically at the cultural problem that exists in public schools."

http://www.prweb.com/releases/2006510/5/prweb382350.htm:

Zoundry

Amazon.com

Technorati : NCLB, assessment, class, culture, policy, politics, power

Young Americans Geographically Illiterate, Survey Suggests

Young Americans Geographically Illiterate, Survey Suggests:

According to the National Geographic web site:

Young adults in the United States fail to understand the world and their place in it, according to a survey-based report on geographic literacy released today. Take Iraq, for example. Despite nearly constant news coverage since the war there began in 2003, 63 percent of Americans aged 18 to 24 failed to correctly locate the country on a map of the Middle East. Seventy percent could not find Iran or Israel. Nine in ten couldn't find Afghanistan on a map of Asia. And 54 percent were unaware that Sudan is a country in Africa.

I am not surprised. I suspect that several factors help create this mismatch between geopolitical reality and the lack of information that US students seem to have. Below are some of my own speculations:

• Social studies and history especially are neglected in schools. This has traditionally been the case however since the advent of No Child Left Behind, where literacy and mathematics take a front seat, social studies and history along with the sciences have been placed in the trunk, barely to see the light of day. Some studies reveal that for all subjects outside of literacy and math, many schools spend less than one hour per week inclusively.
• Within the social studies, geography seems to draw the short straw. While it is nearly impossible to understand history, economics, political science and the like without a strong knowledge of geography and its effects on civilization, it is often taught as merely points on a map.
• Much has to do with the current geopolitical climate in the United States as well. Because of our status as the last superpower, there is a tendency to lean toward a hegemonic view of the world. There is no room for any other geopolitical dominion so long as the arrogance that accompanies the grand scheme for spreading democracy to the world is running full force.

I could go on and point to the messianic fervor of the religious right where, since we are near the end days according to this uncreative, and certainly not new, dogma, there is no need to know anything about the world because it soon won't be the world we know. I could point to the almost maniacal drive to standards based education with its accompanying focus on testing that actually minimizes learning, reducing it to a bunch-of-facts model of teaching and learning. We all know that what is memorized for testing purposes is forgotten within a few days. But I won't do that. Let it suffice to say that I am underwhelmed by the pointing fingers without offering creative solutions.

Here is mine--I believe, as teachers, we must invite students into the study of geography, not because it is going to appear on a test, or that one should know where one is going off to war, but because it is interesting and contributes to the critical decision making needed by citizens of a true democracy (or better, a republic). If students fail to find interest they will fail to learn. And fail to learn they do and not just in geography.

Zoundry

Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies by Diamond provides a geopolitical analysis of the rise of civilization. Explaining what William McNeill called The Rise of the West has become the central problem in the study of global history. In Guns, Germs, and Steel Jared Diamond presents the biologist's answer: geography, demography, and ecological happenstance. Diamond evenhandedly reviews human history on every continent since the Ice Age at a rate that emphasizes only the broadest movements of peoples and ideas. Here is some interesting geography!!!!

Technorati : NCLB, assessment, critical pedagogy, curriculum, education, geography, history, instruction, social studies, standards, teaching, testing