Fwd: [oaklandteachers] Strong American Schools pimping its agenda

[Susan Harman <susanharman@igc.org>]

Begin forwarded message:

> The Washington Post Pimps an Ad
> Posted July 14, 2008 | 11:59 AM (EST)
> Author:  Gerald Bracey
>
>
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------- 
> ---------
>
> The Washington Post Pimps for an Ad
>
>
> The Washington Post pimping for an ad. Can you believe it? The  
> pimpiness
> appeared Sunday, July 13. Who put them up to that? The ad in question  
> is from
> an organization that has become the most irresponsible source of  
> disinformation
> about public schools since Bill Bennett (in fact, it recently  
> sponsored a
> C-SPAN program on the "school crisis" featuring Bennett). It is Strong  
> American
> Schools and its Web site is www.edin08.com. Its driving force is former
> Colorado governor Roy Romer who, at 80, appears to be losing it. SAS  
> describes
> itself as non-partisan. If SAS is non-partisan, so is the communist  
> party.
>
> According to the Post article, "A 30-second television spot shows a
> blond-haired boy raising the flags of dozens of countries including  
> Finland and
> South Korea and Japan, onto one flagpole as ominous orchestral musing  
> plays in
> the background. In a voiceover, actress Jamie Lee Curtis says: 'This  
> boy's
> future isn't looking so good. The schools in everyone of these  
> countries are
> outperforming ours.'"
>
> Really? Is that why 105,000 South Korean kids are studying in American  
> K-12
> schools? Not according to their parents. Their parents hate the rote  
> learning
> that the South Korean schools force on students. They hate the  
> life-determining
> college entrance exam. They want their kids to learn how to think ad  
> they
> believe American schools teach that much better. That's the same  
> reason that a
> group of Singaporean educators toured schools in the suburbs of  
> Washington
> recently. Their most common comment was that the kids here seemed so  
> much more
> engaged than they were back home.
>
> According to spokesperson, Marc Lampkin, the ads are timed with the  
> Beijing
> Olympics and are trying to make these international test comparisons  
> seem like
> a Cognitive Olympics. The only test comparisons mentioned are those  
> from the
> Program of International Student Assessment (PISA), sponsored by OECD.  
> OECD is
> a neo-liberal outfit headquartered in Paris but getting 25% of its  
> budget from
> the U. S. It pushes math and science but would never, ever, push  
> liberal arts,
> solidarity with the poor or sustainable development.
>
> Test scores don't count in the long run. Much research in the 1970's  
> and 1980's
> showed this, but the research got ignored when "high-stakes" tests  
> became the
> fad du jour. Still, about two years ago, journalist Fareed Zakariya  
> observed
> that kids in Singapore, who typically finish first or second in  
> international
> test comparisons, fare much worse than American students when you look  
> 10, 20
> years down the road. He asked the Singapore Minister of Education why.  
> The
> Minister pointed to things the tests don't measure--creativity,  
> ambition and,
> especially, a willingness to challenge conventional wisdom. He said  
> American
> schools cultivate those qualities much better than his own.
>
> That might be why a new RAND Organization study, U. S. Competitiveness  
> in
> Science and Technology, finds that, as stated in the Financial Times,  
> "The US
> remains the dominant global player in science and technology in spite  
> of
> popular perceptions that it risks losing its crown." The U. S.  
> accounts for 40%
> of global spending on scientific R&D and 38% of all patented  
> inventions among
> industrialized nations. Three fourths of the world's leading  
> universities are
> in the U. S.
>
> The RAND report says that "U. S. students performed relatively well in  
> reading
> literacy...." While the Trends in International Mathematics and  
> Science Study
> contains some 3rd world nations (45 countries, to be exact), "limiting  
> the
> comparisons to OECD studies still indicates that U. S. students  
> performed
> relatively well" (pp. 75-76)
>
> The U. S. didn't rank high on the Program of International Student  
> Assessment,
> PISA. On June 18, I posted a first-take on a book from the University  
> of Vienna
> that critically analyzes PISA. Having now read the whole book, which  
> contains
> chapters from researchers all over Europe, I'll be back soon to reveal  
> what it
> says about PISA. PISA does not fare well. Making PISA the flagship of a
> campaign against American schools is like making the Titanic the  
> flagship of
> your fleet. It's going down.
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