Re: Kozol to Kennedy

["Tauna Rogers" <taunar@plateautel.net>]

I think Kozol wrote a beautiful and powerful letter to Kennedy and he is to 
be greatly commended for his work over the years to equalize opportunities 
for poor and disadvantaged children. Mostly, I have nothing but praise for 
him.

One thing that has bothered me a little, however, is that he seems to assume 
that NCLB has wreaked havoc and destruction only in the poor inner city 
schools. Nothing could be further from the truth.

While I have no doubt its consequences are felt much more profoundly in 
those schools (and they have my deepest sympathy), the law's injustices, 
along with its destructive and demoralizing effects, are experienced in 
countless schools all over the nation, even in small communities such as my 
own.

I wish that he would not (inadvertently) diminish the harm that has been 
caused all over the nation while at the same time rightly stressing that 
these effects are felt most profoundly in the poor inner city schools.

Tauna


----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Monty Neill" <monty@fairtest.org>
To: "arn2-strategy" <arn2-strategy@yahoogroups.com>; "ARN-L" 
<arn-l@interversity.org>; <ARN-state@yahoogroups.com>; 
<ndsgroup@yahoogroups.com>
Sent: Thursday, January 03, 2008 9:18 AM
Subject: [arn-l] Kozol to Kennedy


When Jonathan Kozol met with Sen Kennedy to discuss NCLB, Kozol gave Kennedy 
a letter detailing his concerns and issues with NCLB. Kozol then wrote up 
notes from his meeting, which were circulated a while ago. The Education 
Action website now has a link to the letter Kozol gave to Kennedy. What you 
do is use the link below to go to the meeting notes, then within those notes 
you will see in blue the phrase "the letter I handed him" - click on that to 
get to letter to Kennedy. http://ed-action.org/news.php?section=letters

Note that a few of us were concerned about Kozol's formulation in his letter 
of multiple measures in a way that seemed to be tests plus other 
non-academic things; I encouraged him to refer to "multiple sources of 
evidence of student learning" that would include varied classroom and local 
assessments. Jonathan has assured me that he had spoking about multiple 
sources of evidence of learning with Kennedy at the meeting, but in his 
haste did not include that in his writeup. He will also further address 
concerns about the inappropriate uses of tests on ELL students. He is 
meeting with Kennedy again in the near future.

Monty

Monty Neill, Ed.D.
Executive Director
FairTest
342 Broadway
Cambridge, MA 02139
617-864-4810 x 101;  fax 617-497-2224
monty@fairtest.org
http://www.fairtest.org
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