November 26, 2003
Thanksgiving Roundup
Howdy, folks. I'm going to get out of here early today, so I'm going to post just a few entries for you to chew on, then I'll be back sometime on Monday or Tuesday.
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Wendy McElroy's got the roundup on the appalling prevalence of zero-tolerance policies in school, which she believes is related to society's willingness to charge ever-younger kids as adults for crimes such as murder and sexual molestation.
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Stuart Buck, of The Buck Stops Here, takes issue with a chirpy, optimistic statement by a kindergarten teacher at his son's school. The teacher claimed that "today a schoolchild learns more between the freshman and senior years of high school than our grandparents learned in their entire lives." Stuart's response?
That can't possibly be true. For one thing, there is no meaningful way to measure the total sum of the knowledge that our grandparents learned in their entire lives. And just think about it: Do you really think that our grandparents learned less about the world in 70 or 80 years than today's high-schooler does in 4? Have you met any current high-schoolers? Do they really seem more knowledgable than their grandparents about anything beyond computers and cell phones and Eminem?
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The NEA is apparently goading Oregon Governor Ted Kulongoski to sue the Bush administration over the "hoax" that is the No Child Left Behind Act.
The National Education Association has been looking since July for a state to sue the Bush administration, arguing that the law requires sweeping changes in schools without paying for them. No state has signed on, despite widespread complaints by educators that the law requires too much of schools.
Kulongoski criticized the law as "a hoax" in a speech to Oregon school board members earlier this month. But his spokeswoman, Mary Ellen Glynn, said Tuesday he hasn't decided whether to go to court...
The Oregon Education Association, the NEA affiliate in Oregon, has urged the governor to take up the cause, said Mark Toledo, the group's general counsel.
But some fear that suing the Bush administration could backfire on Oregon.
Any Oregonian readers out there got an opinion about this?
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Sarah Lawrence College will no longer require the SAT. Hey, if it's not right for your school - and your school is willing to spend lots of time on each application - then don't use it. Larger universities, though, will almost certainly continue to retain the test as a way of winnowing down the massive number of applications they receive each year.
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Joan Ryan, in her argument for smaller schools, makes an insightful comment about the balance that is needed between teaching and testing:
I understand and even support the rationale for spending money on standardized testing: We have to measure students' knowledge so we can know which schools are working and which aren't. But with limited resources, the priority ought to be creating small schools and training teachers. If so many of our children are starving academically, doesn't it make more sense to put our money first into feeding them, then into weighing them?
Testing is not the be-all end-all of education, nor should it be. The problem is, it isn't until test scores are produced that some schools can be convinced they need to change.
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Jay Mathews of the Washington Post summarizes a list of "wild ideas" for simplifying the college admissions process. Cliff Sojgren is the author of the ideas, which include requiring high schools to provide enough information so that grades can be compared for students from different schools, eliminating the entrance essay, and only using SAT/ACT scores when they are average or above.
I have to disagree with Sojgren's idea that low SATs should be ignored. Certainly other factors can come into play, but what if, for example, a group of students with high grades but low SAT scores all come from one school? That information could be part of the factors used to judge how inflated the grades are from that school. And Sojgren's plan to rate schools will come under just as much fire from those who cry racism/classism as the SATs do now. If the A's given by teachers with advanced degrees are "worth more" in this new admissions process, you know that any school with a high percentage of teachers without advanced degrees is going to cry racism if those teachers are minorities, or classism if those teachers live in a poor neighborhood.
But it's food for thought, nevertheless. And speaking of food, well, I've got to finish up work so that I can drive 11 hours tomorrow to get some really good food.
Ah, Southern Thanksgivings. I hope yours is as blessed and stuffed with love and calories as mine will be.
