Re: NCLB Leaves Gifted Students Behind

[aburke5054@aol.com]

But that's the problem, isn't it - 10th graders who can't read.  If 
more prescriptive and narrowly-focused approaches lead to more kids 
being able to read in the early grades, than more 10th graders are 
going to have the skills they need to do high school work - and not 
elementary school work dressed up as high school work.  That's terribly 
important.  It is not an easy problem - addressing the needs of 
children who begin school with fewer advantages and who live in 
communities that offer them fewer advantages - and the kind of 
accountability-focused curriculum and instruction we are seeing does 
have drawbacks.  But it is progress and progress can be built upon and 
improved upon.  That's going to take everybody pulling together and 
it's over for you and your whining and bomb throwing and grandstanding.

Art

-----Original Message-----
From: Csubstance@aol.com
To: arn-l@interversity.org
Sent: Tue, 28 Aug 2007 2:32 am
Subject: Re: [arn-l] NCLB Leaves Gifted Students Behind


August 28, 2007

Having taught my 28 years in Chicago's public schools in the "inner 
city" in
"non-gifted" schools, I have some observations about the biases in the
Washington Post article.

No child should be subjected to the kinds of drill and kill packages 
that are
now becoming central to "No Child Left Behind" padagogy and school
management. I taught 10th graders who couldn't read, and drill and kill 
was no
better
for them than it was for 10th graders who were already scoring above 
1400 on the

old SAT or above 30 on the ACT (I had those, too, in the inner city).

During the years my son Dan was in Chicago public schools, I worked 
very hard
to innoculate him from the nasty impacts of the narrowing of 
curriculum. It
became more and more difficult as time went on because even many of the 
"best"
teachers were being forced into a Procrustian Bed by standards and
accountability. Remember: Chicago began this madness (and was praised 
for it by
Bill
Clinton in two State of the Union addresses) after the 1995 Mayoral 
takeover of
our public schools. This stuff didn't begin in Texas under George W. 
Bush and
Rod Paige, but in several locations, including Chicago, under the 
"bipartisan"
idiocies of the 1990s.

During all of those years, my son was attending Chicago's public 
schools.

By late elementary school, it became clear that some "gifted" students 
were
learning what I called "Multiple Choice Math." It became more and more
difficult -- but never impossible -- to humor him into actually doing 
math (as
opposed
to psychiing out the "correct" answer from a matrix on a multiple 
choice
test).

As time went on, it became clear to me that some of the "best" math 
students
in Chicago's elementary grades were going to crash and burn if they 
were ever
challenged to actually do math when they reached high school. They had 
become
so conditioned to doing "well" by psyching out the correct answer from 
the
matric that they were crippled when they faced a problem that didn't 
already
have
the answers facing them.

Sure enough, this is precisely what happened when my son Dan entered 
9th
grade at Chicago's Whitney Young High School. He told me that there 
were some
high
scoring students in his early math class (9th grade) who were literally
crushed when they were asked to actually do math. They sat dumbly 
waiting for
someone to give them Multiple Choice Math. Despite relatively high 
scores, it
was
over for them. They had been "top" students in 7th and 8th grade and 
were
finished by the end of 9th.

I have narrated this before here on ARN, and we need to repeat it now. 
The
damage is across the Board.

This week is particularly poignant for me because of how much work it 
was to
avoid the damage being done by all the aspects of "standards and
accountability" under both the Democrats (prior to 2001) and under the
bipartisans (since
No Child Left Behind in 2002). My dislike of the Clinton machine (which 
is
roughly the same this time around as it was when Bill was riding high) 
stems
from
having to listen to that hypocrisy in praise of Chicago Mayor Richard 
M.
Daley's "school reform" during the late 1990s.

By 10th grade, my son was taking statistics (at one of the handful of 
Chicago
public high schools that offered it). He scored a "5" on the AP 
statistics
exam.

In 11th grade he was able to handle "AB" calculus (and scored a "5" on 
that).

In 12th grade, he was ready for "BC" calculus (and scored a "4" on that 
AP
exam).

And yesterday he called after his "Calculus II" class at the University 
of
California at Berkeley and said he was very very happy there. He was 
between
classes, and by dinner had had his first Computer Science class. None 
of this
would have happened had we allowed "multiple choice math" to convince 
that child

(now a young man) how "smart" he was. But the damned thing was that 
every day
and every month and every year we had to push back against these 
idiocies in
order to save what little we could for th elong run.

Had we allowed "standards and accountability" to ruin Dan, yesterday 
(first
day of classes for undergraduates in engineering and math at Berkeley) 
would
not have happened. At some point, the child would have had the 
connection for
math broken, forever.

What has pissed me off for the past decade is that at both "ends" (low
scoring and "gifted") of the standardized test spectrum, this approach 
to
education
is destroying children's love of learning, ability to learn, and 
futures.
Central to what I've done and what we continue to do is the demand that 
we end
all
of these forms of child abuse.

"Standards and Accountability" as it has been unveiled and practiced in 
the
USA in public schools for the past 15 years is the problem, not the 
solution.
The current iteration of that is No Child Left Behind, but it is not 
the source
of the infection. Were NCLB ended tomorrow and the infection not rooted 
out,
children a decade from now would still be facing these cynical 
monstrosities.

And the University of Chicago, my alma mater, through the Consortium, 
is one
of the main reasons why they have gotten away with these frauds for so 
long.
Every one of their studies, form their initial one praising Retention 
in
Chicago, has been a piece of sophisticated propaganda for the 
Standardistas, as
Susan Ohanian has called them.

And my family and I are still facing it because of our commitment to 
public
schools (and our limited resources).

Next Monday, our six year old son Sam begins first grade in Chicago. 
DIBELS
is a local fascination. So here we go again.

George N. Schmidt
Editor, Substance
www.substancenews.net

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