two good articles from Chicago

[Peter Farruggio <pfarr@cal.berkeley.edu>]

> From: "Monty Neill" <monty@fairtest.org>
>
>
> ----- Original Message ----- From: "Parents United for Responsible 
> Education" <pure@pureparents.org>
>
>
> > From the Daily Herald, http://www.dailyherald.com/story/print/?id=145979
> > about a recent presentation by the Chicago Consortium's Elaine Allensworth:
> >
> > Course performance, she said, is a much more powerful predictor (of 
> > ACT performance) than any other background predictor, including 
> > race, gender, mobility or Illinois Standards Achievement Test, or 
> > ISAT, test scores....
> > Following students into their junior year of high school, low ACT 
> > scores result from test prep taking away from course instruction.
> >
> > "Schools who spend less time on ACT test prep and more time on 
> > instruction have better scores," Allensworth said. Class time prep 
> > for the WorkKeys portion of the Prairie State Achievement Exam is 
> > also found to have a direct effect on low ACT scores, she said.
> >
> >
> > AND an editorial in the Chicago Sun-Times - 
> > http://www.suntimes.com/news/commentary/825569,CST-EDT-edit05A.article#
> >
> > ...Good teachers know in their hearts that true learning requires 
> > far more than endlessly drilling for standardized tests.
> >
> > So it's a shame that visits by school groups at Chicago's 10 
> > Museums in the Park are down more than 220,000 students -- almost a 
> > 17 percent drop -- since 2000. Just last week, a Chicago middle 
> > school canceled a trip to the Museum of Science and Industry. The 
> > principal told a teacher that the visit would take away from 
> > prepping for the Illinois Standards Achievement Tests, said Andrea 
> > Ingram, vice president for education and guest experiences at the museum."