We musn’t forget the Big Score from 1999
I’m in the Library of Congress today doing some work the old-fashioned way. I grabbed a book off the shelf with a collection of historical documents in education. One of them, interestingly enough, refers to an article in Newsweek from 1999 that I’ve never read called “The Big Score.” It’s all about the pressures of testing. And, apparently, a group of Chicago students at Whitney Young High School organized and whipped up resistance against the system’s “testmania.”
We have been over and over this for roughly 14 years after this article was written, which means the roots of “testmania” reach back even further, back to the turn of the century when intelligence testing cried its first prescient cries and was used to justify all sorts of rotten decisions in the years following.
Read this article, see if any of these names are still fighting the good fight. But then realize that more testing since 1999 has not yielded anything of significance in education. It’s just cost us more money.
We have been over and over this for roughly 14 years after this article was written, which means the roots of “testmania” reach back even further, back to the turn of the century when intelligence testing cried its first prescient cries and was used to justify all sorts of rotten decisions in the years following.
Read this article, see if any of these names are still fighting the good fight. But then realize that more testing since 1999 has not yielded anything of significance in education. It’s just cost us more money.
We should not valorize all educators with impunity
Because of this woman, an Indiana bigot
educator who wants to exclude students who are gay from prom. We have to admit, as ardent public school and teacher advocates, that not everyone in the classroom is playing with a full deck.
Competition, Choice and Market Forces
When it comes to education, governments bandy the word choice around with evangelical fervour saying, amongst other things, they are opening charter schools for us, the parents.
Rubbish.
In New Zealand we have heaps of choice already: Special Character schools, Steiner Schools, home schooling, private schools, bilingual schools, correspondence school, Te kura kaupapa Maori (Maori language schools), State integrated schools, special schools, Health Units, and teen parent units, single sex schools, day schools, boarding schools and more. How much darned choice does anybody need?
No, it’s not about choice. It’s about selling off education system to private companies and leaving it to the same market forces that lead to the world economic crisis in which we currently languish. seems to me ironic and
Rubbish.
In New Zealand we have heaps of choice already: Special Character schools, Steiner Schools, home schooling, private schools, bilingual schools, correspondence school, Te kura kaupapa Maori (Maori language schools), State integrated schools, special schools, Health Units, and teen parent units, single sex schools, day schools, boarding schools and more. How much darned choice does anybody need?
No, it’s not about choice. It’s about selling off education system to private companies and leaving it to the same market forces that lead to the world economic crisis in which we currently languish. seems to me ironic and
