Re: Researchers: Education reforms flawed

[Peter Farruggio <pfarr@UCLINK4.BERKELEY.EDU>]

Does anybody know who were the researchers from California?




> http://www.austin360.com/statesman/editions/today/news_27.html
> Researchers: Education reforms flawed
>
> By Andrew Mollison
> Washington Bureau
> Saturday, March 16, 2002
> WASHINGTON -- Eight researchers from Texas and California warned Friday
> that President Bush's new education reforms
> could harm Latinos and other minority children who often score low on
> standardized tests.
> The elaborate testing and accountability systems used in Texas, North
> Carolina and Florida were the models for the
> assessment systems required under the bipartisan No Child Left Behind
> Act, which Bush pushed through Congress and
> signed into law in January.
> "State assessment systems such as the one in Texas are causing more harm
> than good," said Angela Valenzuela, an associate
> professor of curriculum and instruction at the University of Texas.
> More than 100 congressional staff members attended the research forum
> moderated by Valenzuela. The forum was sponsored
> by the university's Center for Mexican American Studies, the
> Congressional Hispanic Caucus and the Hispanic Education
> Coalition.
> Among other things, the new law requires that states test every public
> school student in grades three through eight annually in
> reading and math.
> Schools in which all students (or some groups of students, such as
> minorities, the poor or those with disabilities) get low
> scores are to get extra help at first. But if the students continue to
> get very low scores on state tests, all or most of a school's
> administrators and teachers must be replaced.
> Although the law calls for use of "multiple measures" to rate students
> or schools, the scores earned by students on the
> standardized tests end up carrying the most weight, the researchers
> said.
> They said the bad side effects of such "single-score assessments" in
> Texas include lower graduation rates, lower
> grade-to-grade promotion rates, rising dropout rates, elaborate ruses by
> principals to keep from testing low-performing
> students, and more emphasis on test practice than on higher-order
> thinking skills.
> Material defending the new law was distributed at the forum by White
> House and Education Department employees. One of
> their handouts said, "The results of these tests can be used to direct
> resources, such as after-school tutoring or summer school,
> toward those who are falling behind, increasing their chance of success
> during the next school year."
> But several researchers said their studies didn't detect such a trend.
> They said schools in poor neighborhoods in Houston and
> Austin, and in Oakland, Calif., still have fewer amenities, such as
> books in the library or running water in science classrooms,
> than those in more prosperous parts of town.
> "As the rest of the nation moves toward high-stakes testing, we think it
> valid, fair and democratic for states to use multiple
> assessments, at a minimum," Valenzuela said.
> She said that in a "multiple assessments" system, a low test score "can
> be offset by a positive showing of other areas that
> include grades, other test score information, portfolios (files
> containing samples of a student's work) and even teacher
> recommendations."
> Kris Sloan, an education researcher at UT, said the new law has some
> useful provisions, such as one requiring that the scores
> of low-income and minority children be included in all-school averages,
> but also reported separately.
> andym@coxnews.com
>
> © Copyright Cox Interactive Media, Inc.2001 <http://www.cimedia.com/>
>  All rights reserved.
>
>
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