Re: National Review Attacks Michael Winerip

["Arthur Hu" <arthurhu@comcast.net>]

For whatever it's worth, I got published in NR once before and I'm
offering a conservative anti-testing article idea.

---Original Message-----
From: arn-l-owner@interversity.org
[mailto:arn-l-owner@interversity.org]On Behalf Of Bob Schaeffer
Sent: Tuesday, February 24, 2004 5:57 AM
To: ARN Main List; ARN2 Strategy
Subject: [arn-l] National Review Attacks Michael Winerip


Predictably, the National Review, long a knee-jerk, right-wing house
organ, is hosting an attack on New York Times columnist Michael Winerip.
The line of argument here is particularly hypocritical since the
co-author, Jay Greene, has been widely criticized for playing fast and
loose with "facts."


HIGH-STAKES EDITORIALIZING
Times Education Columnist Tugs the Heart,
Clouds the Mind
National Review On-Line

========================================


Hi, noticed the article about high-stakes editorializing against
high stakes testing.

But did you know that some of the strongest and earliest opponents
of outcome-based education - now know as standards based education
and assessment - are far right conservatives?

The hallmark of outcome based education is basing success on a
test score with a passing score set beyond the level of above-average
students. Did you know that standards-based mathematics does not
include standard arithemetic? Or that standards based english
assessment no longer tests for vocabulary or english usage? The
original purpose of the tests was to implement Total Quality
Management. The only reason for absurdly high initial failure rates
on these tests is to provide maximum amount of possible improvement
to justify spending more time and money on "adequate" education, that
is, enough to insure that every student in every subcategory meets
every standard, an impossible goal no matter what standards you
make up.

It is also characterized by a schizophrenic bipartisan attempt to
mollify both the left and right by claiming to the left that everyone
can achieve at the same level, and to the right that everyone can
achieve at a high level. A true conservative believes in expecting
a rank-order bell curve distribution of achievement.

This is why George Bush faces opposition not only from Democrats,
but Republicans over No Child Left Behind, which was devised by
his good Democratic friend, Sandy Kress.

I had an article published some years back in NR about how minorities
scored poorly even in the best suburbs, while Asians scored well
even in the allegedly worst districts.

Standards based testing - the notion that in x years from now,
y% of students will show z% improvement - is merely a mistaken
extrapolation of affirmative action quota based thinking. The same
sort of logical error made by Nixon when he embraced goals and
timetables.


Another topic you mind find interesting is that the real elephant
hiding in the affirmative action debate is that while it's relatively
simple for institutions like the University of Washington or California
to artificially move around numbers of minorities to a few points within
"politically correct", the real major imbalance is between the white
non-jewish christian majority, and the now-significant numbers of
"market dominant" minorities such as Asians, Jews and gays who now make
up about half of Ivy level college student bodies. A Korean American student
recently
decried the lack of diversity at Seattle's University of Washington. But
when I compared numbers to state population, every under-minority was within
1 or 2 points of correct. By contrast, whites who dominate the state
population
are only 5 points away from becoming a numerical minority, while Asians are
nearly 1/3 but less than 10 percent of the state population. This is similar
to the false-front quotas employed by the UCLA and Berkeley before they were
told to abandon preferences - the right number of blacks and Hispanics, but
way too many Asians, and way too few whites.

It may be that
advocating admitting more blacks is an attempt to deflect attention from
the massive over-representation of Asians. And while some people might
actually
advocate setting aside Asian spots for lower scoring whites, would the same
logic justify restricting numbers of more difficult to identiy, but equally
over-represented Jewish and gay students, and any other category that can be
identified to be over-represented??

What do you say?