Re: proposals for national test from Fordham

[Alan Young <alanyoung@mchsi.com>]

Hi all -

You¹ll notice that if you go to the article on the Fordham Foundation
website and look at their bogus, crude state comparison chart that Iowa is
missing. I assume that means that we refused to play the game. They may say
that is worse than an F and we might say we get an ³A² for our stance.
Either way, it suggests still that you do not have to have play their game
and can still educate kids fairly well.

We may not do things perfectly here, but we have at least to this point not
³jumped in the quicksand² yet. I hope that we will continue to do such and
eventually get enough footing of what to do in public education that we can
start leading and pull others out of this ³bad² standards/standardized test
game so that we can start playing the ³good,² authentic learning for the
development of human beings and citizens game.

I say this not to make any feel bad, but because there are huge
multi-million dollar pressures here for us to ³cave.² So like giving
Nebraska support for its attempt to assess student in at least somewhat of a
more authentic way closer to the the child, we need your support in Iowa.
Use us as an example to some degree. If we cave, it will be harder for any
of us to get out of the quicksand. If we can do more than resist, but
continue our emerging efforts to create truly humane, progressive, caring,
democratic, and empowering schools and systems, then we can truly help
others outside of Iowa by making the case for education a better way. And in
Des Moines in particular, where we are urban and more like the rest of the
nation, we can set a better example for how other urbans can do school and
resist the ³quick fix² privatized and standardized approach.

Alan Young
President
Des Moines Education Association
And
Iowa ARN State Coordinator


On 9/5/06 4:46 PM, "Monty Neill" <monty@fairtest.org> wrote:

> Here is Fordham Foundation's PR for its reports, one on state standards and
> one on its scheme for national tests - 4 routes to this goal
>  
> In addition to Fordham staff (including Finn and Petrilli), the report's
> author lists includes "with" -
> 
> Cynthia Brown, Michael Cohen, Robert Gordon, Frederick M. Hess, Gene Hickok,
> Sandy Kress, James Peyser, Diane Ravitch, Andrew Rotherham, Suzanne Tacheny,
> Bob Wise
> 
> - Note that Brown is with the Center on American Progress while Wise heads the
> Alliance for Excellent Education - the rest are the very much the crew that
> brought us that notable policy success, NCLB - folks like Kress, Rotherham,
> Cohen and Hickok - of course a mix of Dems and Republicans.
> 
> Poor state standards? Go national!
> <http://www.edexcellence.net/foundation/global/log.cfm?main=172>
> 
>  <http://www.edexcellence.net/foundation/global/log.cfm?main=172> Two-thirds
> of schoolchildren in America will return to class in coming weeks in states
> with mediocre (or worse) expectations for what their students should learn.
> That's just one of the findings of Fordham's The State of State Standards 2006
> <http://www.edexcellence.net/foundation/publication/publication.cfm?id=358> ,
> a new report which evaluates state academic standards. When the average state
> grade is a "C-minus"--the same as six years earlier, even though most states
> revised their standards since 2000--what is to be done? Go national. Another
> new report from Fordham, To Dream the Impossible Dream: Four Approaches to
> National Standards and Tests for America's Schools
> <http://www.edexcellence.net/foundation/publication/publication.cfm?id=361&amp
> ;CFID=9143125&amp;CFTOKEN=16968814> , brings together education policy leaders
> from across the political spectrum to flesh out and evaluate several forms
> that national standards and testing could take. "Big modern countries need big
> modern standards," said Fordham president Checker Finn. "In America, however,
> we've left standards setting to the states and most of them have bungled the
> job." 
> 
> - pdf of the scheme for national tests is at
> http://www.edexcellence.net/doc/National%20Standards%20Final%20PDF.pdf if the
> link above does not work.
> 
> Monty Neill, Ed.D.
> Executive Director
> FairTest
> 342 Broadway
> Cambridge, MA 02139
> 617-864-4810    fax 617-497-2224
> monty@fairtest.org
> http://www.fairtest.org
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