Lists | ARN-L: April 2000: [no subject]

["Gerald W. Bracey" <gbracey@EROLS.COM>]

Anybody got any ideas for increasing people's awareness of what is credible
in testing?

I ask this question after a low-stakes pi--ing (some people have more
refined sensibilities than I) match with Ken Cooper of the Washington Post
and Adam Meyerson, Vice President for Educational Affairs at the Heritage
Foundation.  Ken wrote an article about the Owen elementary school in
Detroit, one of the 21 high-poverty, high-performance schools identified in
Heritage's "no excuses" report.

Owen reports that its 5th graders averaged at the 98th percentile in
reading.  I tried to tell Cooper that that was nigh on to impossible.
Cooper stopped short of calling me a racist, but said that I didn't believe
that poor black kids in Detroit could outscore rich white kids in Grosse
Point.  The Owen kids do, both on the Metro-7 and MEAP.

I tried to explain that Nobody in a regular school averages the 98th
percentile for a whole grade and that Cooper's and Meyerson eyebrows should
have shot heavenward when they saw that.  I pointed out that the Thomas
Jefferson High School for Science and Technology takes 1/25th of the very
brightest kids in a very high performing district--here in Fairfax
County--and they only get to the 91st percentile on average in reading (they
do get 98 in science and 99 in math).

I don't think I got through.

Do we just have to deal with stuff like this one event at a time??

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