Re: deluded to the max

[aburke5054@aol.com]

-----Original Message-----
 From: gbracey1@verizon.net
 To: arn-l@interversity.org
 Sent: Mon, 20 Nov 2006 10:07 AM
 Subject: [arn-l] deluded to the max
 
 As someone who wrote an anti-NCLB tract before the plan even had a name, almost a full year before the plan became law (Newsday, January 28, 2001), I would like to pronounce my self at this time King of the Terminally Deluded and ask a few questions from the throne.
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   1). If the goal of NCLB was to improve public schools, why did it contain provisions for vouchers? 
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 Linking vouchers to NCLB is a total red-herring. They were in there initially because significant Republican constituencies wanted them. Significant Republican constituences probably still want them. Vouchers would probably have then helped parents who want choices for their kids and would probably help them now. President Bush did not to my knowledge fight very hard for vouchers in NCLB and to my knowledge he did not advance them very much as Governor of Texas.
    2). Why does anyone think rising test scores = improved schools? 
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 I don't know that anyone believes that test scores are the only indicator of the health of the schools, but they are certainly important ones and ones that for better or worse we are able to develop large-scale systems to monitor. You have to start somewhere. A more salient question is why the public education system has not itself advanced clearer, more specific, and more comprehensive models for what improving schools should mean. Academics haven't been of overwhelming help here, either (see below). 
    You castigate educators for gaming the testing system, but in so doing you ignore Campbell's Law 
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 The Golden Rule trumps Campbell's Law.
 
 Or, to repeat Bracey's Paradox, circa 1979, Test Scores Only Mean Something When You Don't Pay Any Attention To Them. ..David Berliner and Sharon Nichols will expand their long (188 pages) documented corruption from high-stakes testing in Collateral Damage, due out in February. 
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 Exercises in silliness. NYT has just summarized reports, for example, on how far behind some minority kids are and how they fall farther behind as they go through school. This is the problem we should be attacking and distracting ourselves with nonsense that test scores don't mean anything important and that we can't have reasonable systems for testing and school improvement.
    3) Why does anyone think 100% proficiency is attainable? 
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 If the purpose of the goal of 100% proficiency is to drive improvement in schools, what does it matter and at the same time why settle for anything less? At just what point do you want to give up on improving schools, particularly the schools that serve large numbers of poor children, minority children, and children whose home language is not English and give up on improving all schools that serve students with other special needs?
 
 Art
         
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