Pett cartoon link Re: [ARN-state] Two strong pieces on testing

[monty@fairtest.org]

If you go today (Nov 3), Pett's cartoon is top of his homepage  
http://www.gocomics.com/joelpett/[1]. I'd paste it in but it won't  
come through on most listservs. Monty

Quoting monty@fairtest.org:

>    Two good pieces in Boston Globe today: a fine cartoon by  
> Joel Pett,  and this strong op ed by Dan Brown. Two in a day for the  
> Globe is  amazing, even if it is Saturday, the least read day of the  
> week.  Pett's cartoon is not on the Globe website - if you are near  
> Boston  and can get the Globe, take a look. Monty  
>
>    [1] DAN BROWN
>
> WAGING A BATTLE ON STANDARDIZED TESTS
>
>    By Dan Brown  |  November 3, 2007
>
>    TEACHERS NEED to pick their battles. I scanned my fourth-grade
> students in the Bronx and considered several battles in my mind.
>
>    Battle Number One: Manolo arrived in my classroom determined to
> fight the world. His mother had died when he was in second grade and
> he had to repeat the year. However, Manolo took substantial steps when
> he began to write creative stories, favoring historical fiction in
> which he inserted himself into a famous event. His writing revealed
> great imagination and interest, but his spelling and mechanics
> remained poor, and state exams continued to label him a failure.
>
>    Battle Number Two: Sara entered my classroom leaps ahead of her
> peers. She wrote hilarious, irreverent poetry and had already mastered
> grade-level math. She fired off endless questions about current
> events. Sara was a dream student, hungry to be challenged. However,
> the administrators at my school discouraged creative lesson planning
> in order to cram in endless "drill-and-kill" packets of basic skills
> test-taking strategies.
>
>    Battle Number Three: Eddie was in his fourth year in fourth grade
> because of absences and test failures. It seemed impossible to get him
> engaged in class. However, he loved to draw and showed a remarkable,
> natural talent for perspective sketching. Tragically, my class was
> deprived of all arts in order to allot more time for standardized test
> preparation.
>
>    How could I help these children face their challenges? Every  moment,
> I felt pulled in 26 directions, invariably drawn to the louder
> children who act out. And then there was the ever-looming Test.
>
>    Everyone involved in education policy claims to be on the side of
> students, yet I quickly learned that the needs of my students fell
> quite low on the school's priority list. Nearly six years into the No
> Child Left Behind era, American public schools have more money than
> ever, but students are still widely denied the most crucial tools for
> their success: individual attention and specialized support.
>
>    In a more rational, equitable system, Manolo would have access to
> small-group tutoring, Sara could flourish in a challenging, high-level
> classroom environment, and Eddie could explore his artistic
> inspiration in school. They would meet with guidance counselors (my
> school had a ratio of 550 students per counselor) and mentors. Knowing
> their school supported their individual needs would further engage
> these children.
>
>    However, the resources that my students badly needed were being
> spent elsewhere; the money was going into high-stakes testing.
>
>    We have entered a dangerous era in which the fad for education
> policy is to import statistics-driven paradigms from the business
> sphere. These mechanistic models are an ill fit in education, a wholly
> human institution. Testing may provide easy-to-crunch metrics, but it
> creates a negative, all-consuming test culture, and does not paint a
> comprehensive picture of students' abilities.
>
>    Under No Child Left Behind, schools, particularly in high-poverty
> areas, are under intense pressure to meet quotas on one-size-fits-all
> standardized tests. Prepping for the test and getting a well-rounded
> education are not the same thing, but there is not room in the school
> day for both tasks.
>
>    The suffocating squeeze that my students and I felt was not a case
> of a few rogue administrators misunderstanding the law, as Assistant
> Secretary of Education Doug Mesecar has said. A recent report by the
> Center of Education Policy discovered that 44 percent of schools have
> reduced instructional time in untested subjects (social studies,
> science, art and music, physical education, lunch, and/or recess).
>
>    It's not just the government trumpeting high-stakes testing as the
> way to get "accountability" from schools. The media have largely gone
> along for the ride as well, trumpeting minute shifts in test score
> graphs as headline-worthy successes or failures.
>
>    We have taken our eye off the ball on what is most important in
> schools - students' needs. Senator Edward Kennedy, chairman of the
> Senate committee overseeing the creation of a new No Child Left Behind
> bill, has an opportunity to recommend changes to the sweeping law.
>
>    Manolo, Sara, Eddie, and every other child, parent, and teacher in
> America are counting on him.
>
>    DAN BROWN /is author of the just released "The Great  
> Expectations  School: A Rookie Year in the New Blackboard Jungle./ ©  
> Copyright[2]  2007 The New York Times Company
> http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2007/11/03/waging_a_battle_on_standardized_tests/[3[2]]
>
> Links:
> ------
> [1] http://www.boston.com/news/globe/[3]
> [2] http://www.boston.com/help/bostoncom_info/copyright[4]
> [3]
> http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2007/11/03/waging_a_battle_on_standardized_tests/[5]


Links:
------
[1] http://www.gocomics.com/joelpett/
[2]  
http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2007/11/03/waging_a_battle_on_standardized_tests/[3
[3] http://www.boston.com/news/globe/
[4] http://www.boston.com/help/bostoncom_info/copyright
[5]  
http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2007/11/03/waging_a_battle_on_standardized_tests/