Re: FW: Julian Bond on NCLB testing

[ABurke5054@aol.com]

I did not say that Mr Hu was confusing testing with teaching, although 
conflating the two is very common in discussion on this list and very common in the 
writings of others that people copy into this list.

As to the rest of what you say, I hardly know where to begin to reply except 
by saying that NCLB is not about testing at all (that is another point of 
confusion that underlies a lot of the heat generated on this list).  It is about 
improving education for needy students and has been so for the 39 years of its 
history.  Up til now it relied entirely on the skills and good will inherent 
in the system to make changes to help needy students.  What has changed is that 
now it provides specific remedies that must be applied. This is the real 
ox-gorer and it explains why much of the establishment is lashing out in public, 
where before it worked in secret, like the teachers I mentioned who voted to 
hold Chapter 1 students to the lowest possible standards in the hope of avoiding 
responsibility for their under-performance.

As for locating the roots of today's achievement testing in the "eugenics 
movement,"  this again ignores history and is simply a tool of polemic. 

Art 

In a message dated 6/23/2004 10:52:13 AM Pacific Standard Time, 
pwmjoy@earthlink.net writes:
Mr. Burke, please get your facts straight. The NCLB focus on standardized
testing is a shameful regurgitation of unskillful past practices debunked
decade after decade ad nauseam. Mr. Hu is not "again confusing testing with
teaching" but quite simply repeating the fact that the pressure to teach
differently is one of the sad by-products of the neurotic and sometimes
psychotic narrow minded brain bashing surly immature educational
doublespoken obsession with standardized testing. Those who over-promote
them insult everyone's intelligence, civil rights, and fundamental humanity.
The
historical roots these tests have in the eugenics movement ought to spell
"caveat"
to us all. I await (a) your limited response, (b) your non-response, (c)
both "a" and "b".
Merci.