Re: Fw: [eddra] Masters of Denial

[aburke5054@aol.com]

How awful that the feds have insisted that schools address the needs of 
all children.

Beyond that, you said that teachers should be against NCLB because it 
is their economic interests to do so (you're wrong, of course).  So 
your high ground is kind of the height of a golf tee.

Art

-----Original Message-----
From: Rick Parkany <rparkany@adelphia.net>
To: arn-l@interversity.org
Cc: Rick Parkany <rparkany@adelphia.net>
Sent: Sun, 4 May 2008 4:36 pm
Subject: Re: [arn-l] Fw: [eddra] Masters of Denial

Someone spat out in ignorance rhetorically:
* Like I said, if your children attended a school where many children
were taught below grade-level, and a law required the school to do
something about it, I very much doubt that you would want to put things
on hold until we find the perfect solution to Kozol, the "rural
underclass," and kids who come to school sick or starving.*

What a hare-brained and ignorant simplification of the issue at hand: 
as if
it is an established fact of logic that we cannot at once seek to obtain
what is best for our children while, at the same time, banish outright
stupid and simplistic solutions that waste time and detract and distract
honest efforts...

I teach/taught in schools in which my children attend--live in the
communities in  which I work...always have, and wouldn't have had it any
other way.

And by having read & listened to so many this list testify to their own
experiences, I realize that my story, though thoroughly my own, is not
unique.

I directed an inner city Settlement House Literacy Program for more 
than a
decade while my children were young and was the absolute first father 
ever
seen carrying around his daughter (1 year old) in a back pack seat 
while I
went door-to-door recruiting in the early '90s visiting families on 
Hamilton
Hill down*The Shooting Gallery* who supported my program and wanted 
their
children to attend it. Hispanic women, not accustomed to seeing men 
alone
with their babies, let alone installed in such contraptions, used to 
run up
to me, putting both hands up against my Elizabeth's back and shouting,
"Mister! oh, my God! Mister: She's going to fall out!"

I have taught and worked my whole career in either rural poor or inner 
city
schools. Of the two middle schools in Utica, NY, the one my children
attended(ed) is far and away the most needy. Although the schools in 
Utica
are *racially* integrated, they are, as are most schools in the USA,
socio-economically segregated. Donovan MS has a majority of their 
children
attending from single-parent households in abject poverty, while the 
other
MS ion which I could have placed my children, is at least a standard
deviation above the norm in such demographics.

I wouldn't have it any other way. My girls have prospered--BOTH of them 
have
blossomed in these settings. Elizabeth will be attending LC Smith 
College of
Engineering & Computer Science @ Syracuse University in August, studying
Structural Civel Engineering & Architecture w/an almost 100%
scholarship/work study scholarship/grant package. She was captain of the
Proctor HS soccer team, sings in the church choir, worked with us 
managing a
soup kitchen while I was teaching & working on a dissertation, and is an
excellent citizen as is her younger 8th grade sister. Neither of them 
would
THINK of attending the North Side MS.

And yet! I resent the HELL out of the manner in which the Feds have
LEGISLATED, DICTATED, and STRIGHT-JACKETED local districts and teaching
teams that we *do something* about the children not testing *at grade 
level*
(not at all a clearly well- or operationally-defined construct--read the
literature!). Go to the current USDoEdn web page and READ for yourself 
what
they (against most research and practice) have declared *acceptable*
research-proven methods to be--see what they decide to fund and upon 
what
evidence...

...THEN, try to tell me the Feds have only the best in mind for this
nations' children. It would take a fool or an opportunist not to see or 
to
admit what is behind this NCLB unfunded mandate to, by shear force and
intimidation, demand that all children perform to the same standards,
whatever may be the facts or conditions of the individual child. Is 
there
anyone, aside from a fool or a WhoaBeGone satirical comedian who will
postulate or ask others to act upon and to admit that ALL children can
perform at the same, mean (average), level of standardized testing??? 
What a
farce!!! What a bastardization of not only statistical facts, but of our
public school mission, itself: to normatize all children and to become 
the
same by shear force of wil and intimidation.

Even the idiot who I quote at the ehad of this message wpn't admit that 
it
is possible to bring ALL children to test at the mean of ANY 
standardized
test, no matter the form or content!!!

Folks:  This is NOT your Grandfather's Federal Educational Mandate! NOT 
in
the tradition of the USDoEdn under Eisenhower's response to Brown vs.
BoEdn...

I resent the HELL out of the fact that the only institution that has not
abdicated its mission for children in this country is the only one being
held accountable for societal failures of world-historic significance.

Where once the Feds DID enjoy a reputation and had a noble and important
role in public education, the Corporate Elites in this country have 
ruined
that legacy to the extent that I look forward to the day when the Feds 
are
driven out of public education, as well they should be, with the garbage
they spew from political hacks and ne'r-do-wells.

Once again, received ignorance is not at all common sense on this 
issue, is
it?!    ;-} rap.

--
"Dein Wachstum sei feste und lache vor Lust!
Deines Herzens Trefflichkeit
Hat dir selbst das Feld bereit',
Auf dem du bluehen musst." JS Bach: Bauern Kantata
Richard A. Parkany
Prometheus Educational Services
http://www.borg.com/~rparkany/
Upper Hudson & Mohawk Valleys; New York State, USA

-----Original Message-----
From: arn-l-owner@interversity.org 
[mailto:arn-l-owner@interversity.org] On
Behalf Of aburke5054@aol.com
Sent: Sunday, May 04, 2008 5:39 PM
To: arn-l@interversity.org
Subject: Re: [arn-l] Fw: [eddra] Masters of Denial

Like I said, if your children attended a school where many children
were taught below grade-level, and a law required the school to do
something about it, I very much doubt that you would want to put things
on hold until we find the perfect solution to Kozol, the "rural
underclass," and kids who come to school sick or starving.

Art

-----Original Message-----
From: GERALD BRACEY <gbracey1@verizon.net>
To: arn-l@interversity.org
Cc: cefinnjr@aol.com
Sent: Sun, 4 May 2008 1:48 pm
Subject: Re: [arn-l] Fw: [eddra] Masters of Denial


"...there are, as I said year ago, plenty of problems to work on in
most
schools.  Schools truly in crisis, such as those described by Jonathan
Kozol
in Savage Inequalities and those serving the rural underclass, need
immediate, intensive, and extensive help."


Gerald W. Bracey

The Second Bracey Report on the Condition of Public Education

Phi Delta Kappan, October 1992


"Above all, income maldistribution creates problems because it is VERY
difficult to provide good schooling for impoverished students who may
come
to school hungry or in cast-off or torn clothing, who suffer from
untreated
medical problems, who live in neighborhoods that are rife with crime
and
violence or who come from homes that lack even basic amenities--let
alone
books or other supports for education."


David C. Berliner and Bruce J. Biddle

The Manufactured Crisis, 1995, p. 219


Ya know Art, if you're going to criticize our positions you really owe
us
the courtesy of reading enough of our work to know what those position
are.


JB



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