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Re: Fw: goofiness
Bravo, Jerry! Great piece.
RE: KIPP and others like it -- it's important to keep in mind that
EVEN IF schools like KIPP lived up to all their hype, we have to face
two facts:
1) KIPP and their ilk help to make segregation "work" -- (see http://
transformeducation.blogspot.com/2007/01/what-if-kipp-worked.html)
2) KIPP and their ilk can't scale -- there are roughly 9,000 students
in KIPP schools. 9,000 students out of the total population of
54,593,000 students in all of public K-12 schools means that KIPP
serves 0.00016486% of the population. And yet, 0.00016486% of
students makes us stand up and say, "This should work for the
remaining 99.999835% of students!" (see http://
transformeducation.blogspot.com/2008/02/defintive-response-to-kipp-
hype.html)
So instead of finding ways to make comprehensive public schools work
for everyone, KIPP, et al, shift the focus to how we can make public
schools work for a limited few. Of course, what they "work" at doing
is the question.
Reminds me of the story about the guy who was walking down the beach
one day and saw thousands of starfish washed up on the sand, slowly
dying. He kept walking and saw in the distance a young kid pick up a
starfish and throw it back in the sea. The kid then picked up another
and then another. The guy walks up to the kid and says, "While I
appreciate what you're doing, you can't possibly save them all. It
won't make any difference." The kid picks up another starfish, throws
it into the water and says, "It made a difference for that one."
Nice, right? But instead of picking up starfish one by one and
throwing them back in the sea, what if we tried to stop them from
washing ashore in the first place?
Peter C.
On Jul 16, 2008, at 12:31 PM, GERALD BRACEY wrote:
Alter's response appears after my response to his response. He
doesn't say much, misinterprets some. Maybe it's a start.
Jerry
----- Original Message -----
From: GERALD BRACEY
To: Web Editors
Sent: Wednesday, July 16, 2008 3:30 PM
Subject: Re: goofiness
Mr. Alter,
I agree that measuring growth is superior to taking cross sections,
but even that is not enough. Poor kids show summer loss, middle
class and affluent kids either hold their own or gain.
So far, only one person has claimed that changes in test scores can
be traced to individual teachers and no one believes him because
his method is proprietary. Those in the academic community who
have worked with what is generally known as Value Added
Measurement, say it can't be done. One reason is that you would
need random assignment of teachers to classess and random
assignment of kids. Ain't gonna happen. Parents will see to
that. By the way, this IS rather rocket science, but it is
something I know a bit about. Most people don't. I directed the
Virginia testing programs for a decade and the Cherry Creek
Colorado school system for another 5. I have written books about
testing and taught tests and measurements at the graduate level. A
lot of people who feel comfortable talking about tests really don't
know doodley squat. Ask a few of your colleagues to explain the
difference between the one parameter and the three parameter model
of Item Response Theory and discuss the merits of each.
Even if we could get by all the technical difficulties, your
contention assumes that we've got tests that measure what should be
measured. We don't. We have tests that are quick and cheap to
give and which line the coffers of publishers, some of whom are
family friends of the Bushes. And after all, the kids who score
the highest on standardized tests, Finnish kids, don't have much
practice with them. They are little used in Finnish education.
Testing is really not necessary. There is not one test being used
states for NCLB that has been validated in terms of testing what
kids will need in the future. Not one.
It is true that only the school gets AYP, but the kids get feedback
on whether they passed the test or not. And that's all they get.
NCLB presents a false dichotomy: You're either proficient or
you're left behind. The results don't tell the kid what they
really didn't understand and they don't tell the teacher how to do
it better. They just say "you better get better." That's really a
dumb approach.
Your logic leaves YOU when you say I'm "too quick to write off the
poor." There is nothing in my letter that implies that. I merely
made the quick point that poverty has a huge impact on
achievement. I've been working with the poor since I was involved
in Head Start in the 60's. In the Third Bracey Report on the
Condition of Public Education (a title created by editors), I
wrote, ""The Second Bracey Report accentuated the raging needs of
city schools and the even more intractable problems of the largely
invisible rural poor. The ensuing year provided more evidence--as
if any were needed--that our cities are in dire straits." The
Third Report was in 1993, the second, 1992. Scandinavian countries
have figure out ways of cutting, virtually eliminating poverty.
Can they keep it up? We'll see, but it sure has paid great
dividends so far.
What's missing here is political will. We can spend $10 billion a
month on an outrageous war on a country that did nothing to us, but
the administration will veto a bill that cancels a pay cut for
doctors in Medicare payments. Not because he's anti-doctor, but
because the money for the whomping 1 1/2 percent increase comes
from his beloved private sector--the private companies who have
been looting Medicare in recent years. On the other hand, Head
Start has never been fully funded, nor have the successful pre-
school programs such as that from High/Scope been supported and
widely disseminated (they would cost a bundle compared to Head
Start but a least one pretty smart guy, Nobelist Jim Heckman says
it would be worth it (why don't you write about that the next time
education strikes your fancy?).
You said flatly that "80 percent of 16,000 randomly selected low-
income students go to college." Now you admit that "Sure, a lot of
KIPP kids drop out." Do they get factored into the 80%. And I
STILL want a citation for that 80% figure because, frankly, in the
absence of one, I don't believe it. Trust but verify.
"Don't we need to offer a lot more of those poor kids that same
chance?" Of course, but it will take a lot of resources. And as
the Broader Bolder coalition notes, "there is no evidence that
school improvement strategies by themselves can substantially,
consistently, and sustainably close these [achievement]
gaps." (www.boldapproach.org). I've been arguing that for years.
Around 1990 there was a flurry of activity around the idea of
making schools one-stop shops for everything--medical, dental,
etc. Why not? The kids are there and it's a hardship on poor
families to have to cart them around to different agencies for
different services. You'd probably not then see outrageous
headlines about how a 12-year-old died because his mother couldn't
find anyone to extract his infected tooth. But those ideas got
lost in high stakes testing and the delusion that schools could do
it all (why don't you write about that sometime?).
Gerald W. Bracey
----- Original Message -----
From: Web Editors
To: gbracey1@verizon.net
Sent: Wednesday, July 16, 2008 1:51 PM
Subject: FW: goofiness
Please see Mr. Alter's response below.
-----Original Message-----
From: Alter, Jonathan
Sent: Wednesday, July 16, 2008 1:46 PM
To: Web Editors
Subject: RE: goofiness
Thanks, Gerald, for your thoughtful letter. Much that you say
about Japan and the limitations of testing is right. But you lose
your logic when you throw up your hands on assessments. The way to
measure both schools and teachers is not through a flat standard
but my measuring improvement over the course of the school
year--.i.e. whether the kids actually learned ANYTHING. Right now,
this isn't measured. Only the school gets AYP. (and I agree that
NCLB has a lot of problems). Why should teachers be free of
evaluation and consequences if they stink? It makes no sense. So
while you're right about many schools, you're too quick to write
off the poor. We've got to get a hold of these dropout rates. Sure,
a lot of KIPP kids drop out. But how about all of the one who
don't? Don't we need to offer a lot more of those poor kids that
same chance?
Best- Jonathan Alter
-----Original Message-----
From: Ronneburger, Julie On Behalf Of Web Editors
Sent: Wednesday, July 16, 2008 12:45 PM
To: Alter, Jonathan
Subject: FW: goofiness
-----Original Message-----
From: GERALD BRACEY [mailto:gbracey1@verizon.net]
Sent: Wednesday, July 16, 2008 12:17 PM
To: Web Editors
Cc: LiteracyForAll@yahoogroups.com; arn-l@interversity.org
Subject: goofiness
Mr. Alter
Back in April, I wrote NYTimes columnist Bob Herbert an email
that began, "I am still amazed after all these years that people
who can be rational and insightful about virtually every topic
under the sun go all goofy when it comes to education. Goofy is
you in today's column."
Now it's your turn. Goofy is you. It so happens that Bob had
also been visited by professional fear monger, Bob Wise. I guess
there's good money in fear. Don't know if Roy Romer turned up in
your office, but Roy, who was pretty smart when I knew him in
Colorado, is the worst of the anxiety peddlers. He gets $60
million from Bill and Eli to make people afraid, very afraid. For
an octogenarian, he's very energetic about it.
You guys don't seem to get it. "A Nation at Risk" (ANAR) said
we were doomed if we didn't completely reform our schools. You
point out that today we're #25 among 30 industrialized nations in
math. So we didn't shape up as ANAR demanded. Yet the World
Economic Forum ranks us the most competitive economy in the world.
So does the Institute for Management Development.
The IMD had us replacing Japan as #1 in 1994 and remaining in
that position.
You remember Japan. It had a great economy and the people who
wrote ANAR thought that that was due to Japanese kids' high test
scores. After ANAR appeared, Secretary of Education Ted Bell
dispatched assistant secretary Checker Finn and a group of policy
wonks to Japan to see if we could import their schools. They said
they thought it was possible. But 7 years later, Japan's economy
sank into the Pacific and took the rest of the Asian Tiger nations
with it. But Japanese kids continued to ace tests. Get it through
your head: tests don't count. As Einstein said, "Not everything
that counts can be measured and not everything that can be measured
counts."
Ask your fellow Newsweek pundit, Fareed Zakariya. He noticed
that those high flying 8th graders in Singapore compared poorly to
American kids 10, 20 years down the road. How come? He asked the
Singapore Minister of Education. We have a test meritocracy, Mr.
Minister said. You have a talent meritocracy. There are things we
can't test like creativity, ambition and, most of all, the American
kids' willingness to challenge conventional wisdom. This is where
Singapore must learn from America. They're trying--a bunch of
Singapore educators visited the adjacent county to mine and were
blown away. The kids were so ENGAGED with school. Maybe that's
why there are 105,000 Korean kids studying here. Their parents
want them to learn English, yes, but they hate the rote learning of
Korean schools and the life-determining college entrance test. But
Korean kids do score high on tests.
Even if tests counted there'd be the fact that among 21
developed nations, the U.S had the highest poverty rate. If we're
#1 in poverty, is it reasonable to expect #1 in test scores? But,
really, tests, don't count. In fact, if you analyze the test
scores by the poverty levels of schools, 30% of American kids score
higher than the highest country in reading. And another 28% score
high enough that if they constituted a nation, they'd rank fourth
in the world (out of 35). But the Bob Wises and Roy Romers aren't
interested in such analyses. They've got money to peddle fear.
George Washington University professor Iris Rotberg recently
wrote, "The fact is, test score comparisons tell you very little
about the quality of schools" (Education Week, June 11). You say
it's fashionable to attack tests. Yes, and the preceding statement
is why. If you wanted to evaluate schools based on test scores,
you'd be a fool. So would Obama.
If you wanted to evaluate teachers based on test scores, you
would be equally foolish. The resistance of anyone to teacher
evaluation that no one has figured out how to do it. You admit this
but say, "we have no way of determining which teachers can actually
teach." It's a bit complicated, this. How do you separate this
year's teacher contribution from last year's? How do you factor
out home, community, lead poisoning, poor nutrition, asthma (which
somehow doesn't seem to turn up in affluent neighborhoods), single
parenthood, stress (I was just reading some pediatric literature on
the devastating impact of stress on the developing brain)?
By the way, the official 2008 Texas GOP Platform says, and I
quote, "The No child Left Behind Act has been a massive failure and
should be abolished." Know what? They're right.
A second by-the-way and a strong request: KIPP admissions are
anything but random. If Wise or Romer told you that, they're
lying. And I want to see a citation for your claim that 80 percent
of KIPP go to college. If you look even at KIPP's own annual
reports, you see extremely high attrition rates from grade 5 to
grade 8.
Sincerely,
Gerald W. Bracey
1797 Duffield Lane
Alexandria, VA 22307
703-317-1716
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