Fw: two good articles from Chicago

["Monty Neill" <monty@fairtest.org>]

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Parents United for Responsible Education" <pure@pureparents.org>


> From the Daily Herald, http://www.dailyherald.com/story/print/?id=145979
> about a recent presentation by the Chicago Consortium's Elaine 
> Allensworth:
>
> Course performance, she said, is a much more powerful predictor (of ACT 
> performance) than any other background predictor, including race, gender, 
> mobility or Illinois Standards Achievement Test, or ISAT, test scores....
> Following students into their junior year of high school, low ACT scores 
> result from test prep taking away from course instruction.
>
> "Schools who spend less time on ACT test prep and more time on instruction 
> have better scores," Allensworth said. Class time prep for the WorkKeys 
> portion of the Prairie State Achievement Exam is also found to have a 
> direct effect on low ACT scores, she said.
>
>
> AND an editorial in the Chicago Sun-Times - 
> http://www.suntimes.com/news/commentary/825569,CST-EDT-edit05A.article#
>
> ...Good teachers know in their hearts that true learning requires far more 
> than endlessly drilling for standardized tests.
>
> So it's a shame that visits by school groups at Chicago's 10 Museums in 
> the Park are down more than 220,000 students -- almost a 17 percent 
> drop -- since 2000. Just last week, a Chicago middle school canceled a 
> trip to the Museum of Science and Industry. The principal told a teacher 
> that the visit would take away from prepping for the Illinois Standards 
> Achievement Tests, said Andrea Ingram, vice president for education and 
> guest experiences at the museum."