Re: bloomberg's cracked trumpet

[aburke5054@aol.com]

Leaving aside the argument that a test has value to the degree that it 
is ignored, and ignoring the issue of whether a "wider" test is 
necessarily better, Randi Weingarten, the union president in NYC, 
generally supported Bloomberg's assumption of authority for NYC 
schools, so unless Randi is now part of the vast Business 
Roundtable-led conspiracy to privatize the public schools, I don't 
think the conspiracy theory explains very much here at all.

Art

-----Original Message-----
From: Horn, James <jhorn@monmouth.edu>
To: arn-l@interversity.org
Sent: Fri, 16 Nov 2007 7:11 am
Subject: [arn-l] bloomberg's cracked trumpet

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As the above chart from the New York Times shows, NYC student scores on 
the
state test have increased over the past five years, while the NAEP 
(national)
scores have remained flat. Even though Bloomberg's trumpet has been the 
loudest,
this same phenomenon is occurring all over the country. Why? Because 
the
schools, particularly the urban schools, are focused entirely and 
year-round on
state test prep, while the NAEP is a bit wider kind of 
temperature-taking test
of academic abilities.

Now there are plenty of people who want to turn NAEP or something like 
it into a
national test, while getting rid of the state tests where school 
systems can
"game" the system, as the Eduwanks and Eduwankettes like to say. This 
would, of
course, only serve to turn the full-time test prep in schools toward 
the
national test, which would, in fact, (as Jerry Bracey has pointed out
repeatedly) destroy any value that tests like the NAEP now have.

The disturbing part of this story from the Times is that it points out 
a trend
that can be seen in the national NAEP data: NAEP gains were higher 
before the
current testing hysteria in America got underway. This suggests what 
many of us
have known, which is that the accountability-through-testing fixation 
is making
American school children stupid. Imagine that.

By Jennifer Medina:

    New York City’s eighth graders have made no significant progress in 
reading
and math since Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg took control of the city 
schools,
according to federal test scores released yesterday, in contrast with 
the
largely steady gains that have been recorded on state tests.

    The national scores also showed little narrowing of the achievement 
gap
between white students and their black and Hispanic counterparts.

    The results for New York and 10 other large urban districts on the 
federal
tests, the National Assessment of Educational Progress, paint a 
generally
stagnant picture for the city, although there are gains in fourth-grade 
math. On
measure after measure, the scores showed “no significant change” 
between 2005,
when the test was previously administered, and 2007.

    Mr. Bloomberg has trumpeted improving state test scores as evidence 
that the
city is setting the pace for urban school reform. But the federal 
scores, on a
test often called the nation’s report card, suggest that the city’s 
gains are
limited. Similar patterns of gains on state tests outstripping gains on 
the
national assessment have emerged elsewhere as well.

    New York City’s federal scores showed that while fourth-grade 
reading
results have improved over the past five years, the most significant 
jump came
in 2002, before Mr. Bloomberg took control. . . .

And, thus, another vaunted mayoral miracle turns out to just another 
attempted
corporate takeover of a another civic institution. Can we restore 
public control
before it is too late?

--
Posted By Jim Horn to Schools Matter at 11/16/2007 09:34:00 AM






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