Wednesday, December 26, 2012

We’ve been there before… « Deborah Meier on Education

We’ve been there before… « Deborah Meier on Education:


We’ve been there before…

“The task of returning testing to its proper place will be difficult….Those of us who believe in educational equity are facing enormously difficult problems,,,,Our belief in democracy–that normal every day people can make sense of their world and learn to make decisions about it– is at stake…There…is arising a renewed interest in educational tracking…and in new legislative proposals to support private education… All these anti-egalitarian trends….are nourished by the renewed focus on testing
“To the ideologues of the New Right, the focus on testing appears correct and proper, since the free play of market forces ‘naturally’ produces inequality… Such nonsense will someday fade. But the ‘normal’ curve so deeply and perniciously embedded in American education through the use of standardized norm-referenced testing will not fade as quickly. …The much needed development of a theory and practice consistent with