Fwd: Excellent oped in today's Washington Post

[Susan Harman <susanharman@igc.org>]

Begin forwarded message:

  From: James Crawford <jwcrawford@COMPUSERVE.COM>

  Date: Mon Apr 9, 2007 7:59:20 PM US/Pacific

  To: ELLADVOC@asu.edu

  Subject: Excellent oped in today's Washington Post

  Reply-To: James Crawford <jwcrawford@COMPUSERVE.COM>

  http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/04/08/AR2007040800925.html

  Classroom Caste System

  By David Keyes

  Monday, April 9, 2007; Page A13

  Written five years ago to reduce the "achievement gap," the No Child Left
  Behind Act has in fact created a gap in American education. Its pressure to
  raise test scores has caused many schools to give poor and minority students
  an impoverished education that focuses primarily on basic skills.

  As it comes up for reauthorization, members of Congress should consider the
  unintended consequence of the act: a new gap between poor and minority
  students, who are being taught to seek simple answers, and largely wealthy
  and white students, who are learning to ask complex questions. In my work as
  an elementary school teacher, I have seen this new gap and I worry about its
  impact on my students' future prospects.

  Although supporters and critics of No Child Left Behind agree on little, both
  would acknowledge that testing lies at the heart of the law. Schools approach
  the act's testing requirements differently, depending on the students they
  serve.

  Fifty years after Brown v. Board of Education, American schools remain
  largely segregated. Schools serving mostly wealthy and white students have a
  distinct advantage when it comes to testing. Their students are far more
  likely to be raised in an environment that gives them the necessary tools to
  succeed on tests. They grow up with the intellectual abundance their wealth
  provides: books, educational videos and Baby Einstein games, to name a few.
  Having these resources may not make children smarter, but it does educate
  them in many of the skills -- such as letter sounds and addition facts --
  that are covered on standardized tests. Knowing their students are likely to
  succeed on tests gives these schools freedom to teach higher-level thinking
  skills.

  Poor and minority children also come to school with rich backgrounds. They
  speak foreign languages, make music, tell vivid stories and have other skills
  not typical of their peers. Their backgrounds, however, often do not provide
  them with the academic skills needed to succeed on standardized tests.
  Fearful of poor test scores that can bring punitive measures, schools spend
  an inordinate amount of time preparing their students for the tests.

  Schools often use test-prep programs to try to raise test scores. The problem
  with these programs is that they teach the skills covered on tests, and only
  these skills. Poor and minority students spend hours repeating "B buh ball"
  and two plus two equals four. Every hour spent drilling basic skills is an
  hour not spent developing the higher-level thinking skills that are
  emphasized in wealthier school districts.

  I have worked in both types of schools. Currently, I teach in an almost
  exclusively minority, high-poverty elementary school. Administrators require
  teachers to strictly adhere to a months-long test-prep program. My students
  recoil at the sight of their test-prep books. Last year, some of my students
  cried, wracked with anxiety over the tests.

  My students are 7 and 8 years old.

  I did my student teaching in an almost exclusively white and wealthy school.
  There, the students studied the role of quilts on the Underground Railroad,
  brainstormed plans to save wolves from extinction and performed dances based
  on retellings of Cinderella. The children learned to think and they loved it.

  At the end of the year, test results will come out for these two schools.
  Educators and politicians will trumpet any reduction of the so-called
  achievement gap. This misses the point. Students will leave these two schools
  and schools like them with a widely varying set of skills. As the achievement
  gap is being reduced, another gap is being created. Students in largely
  wealthy and white schools are learning to ask larger questions; students in
  poor and minority schools are only being taught to answer smaller ones.

  The effect of this gap will be long-lasting. Students taught higher-level
  thinking skills will be able to compete for jobs at the upper echelon of the
  21st-century economy. Students who receive an impoverished education focused
  on basic skills will be stuck at the bottom.

  The No Child Left Behind Act is creating a caste-like system in which
  students' future prospects are likely to be similar to those of their
  parents. This undemocratic development is at odds with a society that prides
  itself on being a meritocracy. As Congress debates the renewal of the law,
  members should consider not only whether the act is reducing the achievement
  gap but also the skills gap it is creating.

  The writer is a second-grade teacher at Bel Pre Elementary School in Silver
  Spring.