Re: Fw: hickok

[Peter Campbell <campbellp@mail.montclair.edu>]

Burke: "Only the hopelessly naive or the terminally deluded could  
possibly attribute states' failure to act in the best interests of  
their parents and kids to 'mindless draconian machinations of NCLB'  
and 'fetishizing AYP' (whatever those incantations mean)."

"Mindless draconian machinations of NCLB" =

1) a system under which public schools must meet federal requirements  
to hire "highly qualified teachers" while private, for-profit  
tutoring companies need not

2) a system that takes away money ear-marked for poor children (Title  
1) and gives it to these tutoring companies, 75% of which are  
private, for-profit ventures
(http://www.ed.gov/rschstat/eval/disadv/title1interimreport/execsum.pdf)

3) a system that requires states to "develop, implement, and publicly  
report on standards and techniques for monitoring the quality and  
effectiveness of services offered by approved supplemental  
educational services providers, and for withdrawing approval from  
providers that fail, for two consecutive years, to contribute to  
increasing the academic proficiency of students served by the  
providers" (http://www.ed.gov/policy/elsec/guid/suppsvcsguid.pdf),  
yet does not provide the funding to implement such oversight to  
states already staggering under the weight of having to pay for the  
creation, administration, and scoring of roughly 800 different  
standardized tests across the country (not including alternative  
tests for students with "severe cognitive disabilities" and not  
including the new tests being proposed for IEP students with  
"modified achievement standards")

"Fetishize" = have an excessive and irrational commitment to or  
obsession with

"Fetishizing AYP" = a system that worships at the alter of pseudo- 
science and lends to a single data point the entire burden of proof  
concerning whether kids are learning, teachers are doing their jobs,  
and public education is working

Connecticut has it partly right: sue the bastards for under-funding  
this punitive data orgy. Of course, we need to be careful what we  
wish for. As Jim Horn says, better to dump NCLB in the Potomac.

---
Peter Campbell