Hidden amongst the hippies and educrats in Oregon are a group of pro-testing professors who have been developing empirical evidence to support standardized tests and NCLB:
Over the years, the University of Oregon has developed a reputation as a hippie haven, home to Hacky-Sackers, Frisbee-throwers and anti-globalism activists. But tucked away in a bucolic corner of the campus is a group of education professors whose work has been widely influential and found favor with the Bush administration.
Along with their counterparts at schools like the University of Illinois and the University of Texas, Oregon professors have been the driving forces behind the push for letting "scientifically based research" inform classroom practices. The professors are promoting teaching techniques that they say have been tested extensively in classrooms and have produced good results on standardized exams.
Some of their concepts have been scooped up by the Education Department for use in the No Child Left Behind act, the Bush administration's centerpiece education bill...
Critics say the Oregon professors have helped usher in an age of rigidity in education, with classrooms full of teachers who "teach to the test," and students whose creativity is stifled because so much time is devoted to preparing for testing.
"The emphasis on research-based instruction is a bit of a problem," said Barbara Bowman, a professor at Chicago's Erikson Institute, a graduate school in child development. "Some of the more qualitative ways of assessing children's learning are generally not included. We are focusing on things that are easy to see, rather than taking a look at the whole."
Lovely to see the anti-science crowd rush in to identify themselves as fools. Apparently, it's more important to take a non-scientific look at "the whole child" than to measure how well a child can read. How easy it must be to "teach" a child when the assumption is that the outcome cannot possibly be measured.
On the other hand, given that critics insist the structured curriculums are actually harmful to kids, no wonder teachers are so stressed out today:
Rheta DeVries, who directs the Regents' Center for early development education at the University of Northern Iowa, said such structured curriculums [as phonics] are harmful to children.
"Testing takes over and determines the curriculum, and children don't get experience with hands-on science experimentation and activities that call forth their best energies," she said. "What a child knows cannot necessarily be measured in fragmented tests used for assessment."
Yes, it can. Tests can indeed measure what a child knows - maybe not everything a child knows, but someone who understands the material will not fail a basic skills exam. It's one thing to (correctly) worry that basic skills tests might lead teachers to dumb down curriculum, but it's just plain silly to claim that test don't actually measure learning.
What's nice is that some Oregon teachers who have special education students are rejecting the touchy-feely stuff and embracing the empirically-supported theories:
...Sharon Brumbley, a special education teacher who has long been a Direct Instruction disciple, said that using the curriculum at early grades has reduced the number of children placed in special education later on at her school in Springfield, Oregon.
"They've pared out all the nonessentials, and gotten down to what kids need to learn, what they need to know," she said.
Posted by kswygert at July 21, 2004 01:13 PM