The Education Gadfly isn't much interested in the "sob stories" about teachers who don't have time to teach the "interesting" stuff because they're having to raise basic literacy rates. One recent sob story comes from Time magazine's Amanda Ripley, who reports on "Beating the Bubble Test".
First, the Time article:
Here are some of the things kids at Garfield/Franklin elementary in Muscatine, Iowa, no longer do: eagle watch on the Mississippi River, go on field trips to the University of Iowa's Museum of Natural History and have two daily recesses. A sensible bargain has been struck: literacy first, canoe trips later. But there are more substantive losses too. Creative writing, social studies and computer work have all become occasional indulgences. Now that the standardized fill-in-the-bubble test is the foundation upon which public schools rest...there is little time for anything else.
Franklin is one of the new law's success stories. After landing on the dreaded Schools in Need of Improvement list two years ago, the students and staff clawed their way off it...
It has also become a very different place. The kids are better readers, mathematicians and test takers. But while Democratic presidential candidates have been lambasting the law's funding levels, Franklin's teachers talk of other things. They bemoan a loss of spontaneity, breadth and play — problems money won't fix. The trade-off may be worth it, but it is important to acknowledge the costs. This is the story of an elementary school — once an uneven patchwork of lessons and projects — that has been rationalized.
The Gadfly's response:
Until recently, Garfield/Franklin elementary in Muscatine, Iowa was a bastion of progressive learning—students went "eagle watching on the Mississippi River, to the University of Iowa's Museum of Natural History, and have two daily recesses." But apparently, many students couldn't actually read the exhibits at the museum. Until the school redoubled its efforts to prepare students for the state's accountability test (i.e., to teach them basic computation skills and reading), barely half achieved minimal proficiency in reading and math on the Iowa Test of Basic Skills. Now, according to Ripley, "the percentage of fourth-graders who passed the reading test rose from 58 percent to 74 percent; in math, proficiency went from 58 percent to 86 percent." But Franklin elementary "has become a very different place. The kids are better readers and mathematicians and test takers" but teachers "bemoan a loss of spontaneity, breadth, and play—problems money won't fix." Spontaneous illiteracy: now there's an educational outcome for you.
Emphasis mine. I'm just amazed. I'm amazed that there is such a resistance to spending class time to make sure every child can read, write, and do math. I'm amazed by the fact that teachers are upset that children are reading and writing better in school but have less time to play in school. I'm amazed that anyone thought two recesses was more important than creating better readers. And I'm amazed that teachers complain about having to bring everyone up to speed, yet the school thought this was a good idea:
Activities for the gifted and talented have not been cut, but high-achieving kids aren't grouped in accelerated clusters in regular classes anymore. They are spread out so they can help the lower-scoring students.
Why should they be expected to do this? They're not in school to help other kids - that's the teacher's job. Is the implication here that students can't be expected to improve unless they see other students doing better? If teachers are overworked, putting kids of wildly-differing ability levels in the same classroom is only going to make instruction harder.
Posted by kswygert at March 2, 2004 11:44 AM