Fwd: [LiteracyForAll] attachments

[Susan Harman <susanharman@igc.org>]

Begin forwarded message:

> From: "GERALD BRACEY" <gbracey1@verizon.net>
> Date: Tue Apr 1, 2008  5:22:07 PM US/Pacific
> To: <arn-l@interversity.org>,	<LiteracyForAll@yahoogroups.com>
> Subject: [LiteracyForAll] attachments
> Reply-To: LiteracyForAll@yahoogroups.com
>
> We've had painters in the house the last 4 days and maybe I'm 
> suffering from the fumes.  I know that LFA and ARN don't take 
> attachments, but sent one anyway.  Here's the same material as a text 
> file.  Please note the recommended reading at the end.
>
> JB
>
> -------------------------
>
>
>
>
> WE’RE A NATION AT RISK (HAPPRY APRIL FOOL’S DAY)
>
>
> “A Nation at Risk” should have been published on April 1, 1983.  It 
> was a great April Fools Day joke on America (Given what it did to 
> public education, though, educators can be forgiven if they smile 
> not).  Instead, the National Commission on Excellence in Education 
> published it on April 28, meaning we “celebrate” its 25th anniversary 
> later this month.  Most commentators thought it raised a great alarm 
> with its stentorian rhetoric about “a rising tide of mediocrity” and 
> cold warrior comment that “if an unfriendly foreign power had 
> attempted to impose on America the mediocre performance that exists 
> today, we might well have considered it an act of war.”  Whew.
>
> New York Times columnist/humorist, Russell Baker, looked at the 
> commissioners’ rhetoric, which he said would not pass muster in a 10th 
> grade essay and declared, “I’m giving them an A+ in mediocrity.”  
> Baker’s quip had no impact as we have faced, and continue to face, a 
> rising tide of reform reports and school bashing.
>
> Interestingly, conservatives criticized the report or rejected it.  
> Joseph Kraft excoriated his fellow conservatives for reacting to the 
> report as they always did to other liberal activities:  blasting the 
> liberals without offering anything positive.  Bill Buckley chided the 
> commission for offering reforms “that you and I would come up with 
> over the phone.”  And George Will lamented the lack of emphasis on 
> history.
>
> In fact, ANAR is a golden treasury of selected, spun, and distorted 
> statistics which ANAR said were indicators of the risk—all of which 
> were cast in terms of test scores.  (ANAR fixed on this nation the 
> idea that tests are all you need to evaluate schools and the idea as 
> well that high test scores inevitably lead to economic growth).  For 
> example, “there was a steady decline in science achievement scores of 
> U. S. 17-year-olds as measured by national assessments in 1969, 1973 
> and 1997.”  This was true.  But if one asked why the commission picked 
> on science and 17-year-olds, curious facts emerged to answer the 
> question.  That steady decline in science isn’t there for 9- and 
> 13-year-olds, the other two ages tested.  It’s not there for any age 
> in reading.  It’s not there for any age in math.  The commission had 9 
> trend lines (3 subjects by 3 ages).  Only one could be used to support 
> crisis rhetoric.  That was the only one to appear in the report.
>
> Or, consider this:  “Average achievement of high school students on 
> most standardized tests is now lower than 26 years ago when Sputnik 
> was launched.”  This is a most curious statement because at the time, 
> only two achievement tests, the Iowa Tests of Basic Skills (grades 
> 3-8) and the Iowa Tests of Educational Development (grades 9-12) had 
> fixed standards that permitted analysis of trends over time (NAEP did 
> not exist until 1969).
>
> If one looks at the trends for the ITBS or ITED one sees a similar 
> pattern for all grades: a decline for about a decade, roughly 1965 to 
> 1975 (the onset various a bit by grade) and then a rise to record high 
> levels (no media considered this news).
>
> Now consider the events of that decade.  It opened with the Watts 
> riots in L. A. and these were followed by urban violence all across 
> the nation.  It was the decade of the Black Panthers, Symbionese 
> Liberation Army, Students for a Democratic Society, and the Free 
> Speech Movement which led to sit-ins at many universities.  It 
> contained the Summer of Love, Woodstock and Altamont.  Many people 
> took up the recreational use of mind-altering drugs and Ken Kesey led 
> his LSD-laced Merry Pranksters into many outrageous situations (see 
> Tom Wolfe, The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test).  The Kent State 
> atrocities and the Chicago Police Riot both occurred in this decade
>
> In those ten years, the literature contained many anti-Establishment 
> tracts such as The Making of a Counter Culture, The Greening of 
> America, and The Pursuit of Loneliness.  Books limited to schools 
> included Death at an Early Age, The Way It Spozed to Be, 36 Children, 
> Free Schools, Deschooling Society, and Teaching as a Subversive 
> Activity.
>
> Martin Luther King, Malcolm X, and Robert Kennedy were all 
> assassinated.  The nation became obsessed and then depressed over 
> first the Vietnam War and then Watergate.
>
> Little wonder that a saying later emerged: If you remember the 
> Sixties, you weren’t there.  It would have been an effing miracle if 
> test scores had not fallen.
>
> There is a decent set of retrospectives on ANAR in the April Phi Delta 
> Kappan.  My take on the report appeared in Kappan’s April 2003 issue, 
> “April Foolishness.”  Better than the look-backs are three articles on 
> education for a democracy, articles which emphasize concepts like 
> cooperation, community, renewal, fulfillment, civic work, tolerance, 
> commitment, and other words I feared had disappeared from the English 
> language in this country.  I highly recommend this trio of essays.
>
>
>
>
> [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
>
>
> ------------------------------------
>
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