Interesting discussion in the Marietta Times about the dislike held by the teaching establishment towards the NCLB Act and towards standardized testing. Apparently "top-down" reforms aren't to be trusted, despite the fact that "bottom-up" reforms will help at most a few kids.
These quotes by Judy Wray, a middle school teacher and president of the district's teachers union, are telling:
"It [the NCLB Act] has been so politicized. It obviously shows Bush's priorities are not in education."
And as we all know, teachers' unions are never politicized, and their first priority is always education. Uh-huh.
The heavy testing is preparing many students to fail, said Wray. The standards will exacerbate the rifts between high-performing students and others. The reliance on standardized tests also lowers the quality of education.
I believe what she means here is that setting meaningful standards will require that some kids fall below those standards, and those kids will obviously not be performing as well as kids who score above the standard. Have I got that right? Is anyone other than an anti-standards teacher going to assume that this is a bad thing?
Here's an analogous statement to the one that a standard "exacerbates a rift" between high- and low-performers. Take two people; one is five feet tall and the other is six feet tall. Stand them up against a wall, and draw a line at five-and-a-half feet. Are you "exacerbating the rift" between the two people? No. They're still a foot apart in height - you've just made it more easy to estimate, or to show, how far apart the two people are. Removing the line won't magically make the two people of equal height.
What Ms. Wray doesn't understand is that the poorly-performing kids are going to be at a disadvantage whether the standards are set or not. The standards don't widen the rifts. The tests don't widen the rifts. Poor teaching, and poor administration, widens the rifts, as kids who need effective instruction are allowed to fall further behind, despite being socially promoted to higher grades. The standards are necessary so that we know just how far behind some kids are, and what we can do to help them.
Ms. Wray also opposes the opportunities parents have to remove their kids from failing schools. Why am I not surprised?
Posted by kswygert at August 5, 2003 12:16 PM