Doug Mann wrote: The National Assessment of Education Progress (federal testing program) has been monitoring achievement levels in reading and math on a national scale since the 1970s. And there have been widely used standardized achievement tests, such as the California Achievement Test, that also allow comparisons between
districts and individual schools in various states using the same yardstick. Since the late 1960s the federal government has required school districts to do standardized achievement testing, to breakdown test score averages by race and eligibility for free and reduced price lunches, and to pass the information along to the state and federal departments of education. Since the early 80s the federal department of education has been promoting reforms to address a nonexistent "rising tide of mediocrity." The recipes for promoting "excellence" have included high stakes testing, intensified curriculum tracking, "choice" (magnets, charter schools, school vouchers), more homework, etc. Although Bush education advisor Diane Ravitch made a good case for "untracking" the schools in "Left Back: A century of failed school reforms," the federal government has not abandoned its century of support for tracking. Mark Anderson replies: Michael Atherton was correct in saying that the NCLB moved in the right direction in principle, although it needs much tweaking in practice. Perhaps school districts have required testing for some time for school district to be reported to various depts. of education. But it is important for the public to receive this information, and for this information to be reported by school, not just by district. Also NCLB requires specific actions, which will force schools to try to fix what's wrong, not just make excuses. Everyone's been complaining for decades about the performance of US schools; at least the Feds have now done something about it, even if it's a pretty clumsy attempt. Maybe we should try to fix the program, instead of trashing it totally and going back to the usual ineffectual methods to fix the schools. Ironically the most draconian part of NCLB seems to be the attempt to fix the "gap," the difference between majority students and those of different races, etc. It is ironic because the "gap" is the problem most often cited by the Left as the biggest school issue, yet the Left seems to be united in hating NCLB. If NCLB merely tried to fix underachieving schools as a whole, and not every subgroup within those schools, we would many fewer schools on the nonperforming list, and probably a lot less controversy. For example, Barton School, often held up as a beacon for other schools in Minneapolis to follow, got on the list because some subgroup wasn't up to par. I think the major problem with NCLB is that too many schools end up on the bad list, and we simply don't have the resources to fix them all at once. In particular, I wonder if it is as important to fix the "gap" as it is to fix the really bad schools where most of the students are failing. Maybe fixing the "gap" should be the second stage in the program. Also the goal of NCLB seems to be to fix every school by 2014, including all subgroup issues. But we all know we'll never reach perfection -- maybe we should substitute some achievable goal to reach since we'll never hit the one currently publicized. On a slightly different topic, but related to Doug Mann's discussion: Doug, you've been talking about the nonexistent achievement gap in the '70's for years, and I've been meaning to reply. I remember hearing about how SAT scores started declining about 1970, and continued to decline every year until they plateaued sometime in the '80's. Then the scores again began to increase. I have a cite that more or less agrees with this memory of mine: http://www.cnn.com/2003/EDUCATION/08/26/sat.scores.ap/ That certainly does indicate that at least the high achievers did do worse, perhaps because of the education methods used in the '70's? And then perhaps the pedagogic methods of the '80's improved the situation? I think this contradicts the thesis you've been pushing. Mark V Anderson Bancroft REMINDERS: 1. Think a member has violated the rules? Email the list manager at [EMAIL PROTECTED] before continuing it on the list. 2. Don't feed the troll! Ignore obvious flame-bait. For state and national discussions see: http://e-democracy.org/discuss.html For external forums, see: http://e-democracy.org/mninteract ________________________________ Minneapolis Issues Forum - A City-focused Civic Discussion - Mn E-Democracy Post messages to: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Subscribe, Un-subscribe, etc. at: http://e-democracy.org/mpls
