Rog Lucido's New Book: "Restoring Sanity to the Classroom"
An excerpt from Horace (Rog) Lucido’s new book, “Restoring Sanity to the Classroom: Eliminating the Testing Mania.”
It seems like education is on a never ending quest to be ‘reformed’. The current trend began with the successful USSR’s orbiting of Sputnik on October 4, 1957 and reached a crescendo in 1983 with the publication of ‘A Nation at Risk.’ This flawed report spoke of a ‘rising level of mediocrity’ in our schools when in fact the evidence it cited was greatly skewed towards that desired outcome.
False conclusion
Engendering public fear, the message continues today: ‘American students are behind those of many countries. Our dominance of military and economic strength is on the decline. We are losing our competitiveness.’ The root cause of this false conclusion was laid at the feet of our schools by the U.S. corporate world. But when viewed from an international perspective our perceived ‘plight’ was due in fact not to schools but to American social, business, and political failings.
No correlation
The World Economic Forum researchers have concluded that the U.S. economic competitiveness has weaknesses. The report reads that the “weaknesses include the business communities’ criticism of the public and private institutions, that there is a great lack of trust in politicians, and a lack of a strong relationship between government and business. And the U.S. debt continues to grow.”
The relationship is moot
According to the World Economic Forum, student test scores on international tests in reading, mathematics and science were not even mentioned as connected to the weakening of the U.S.’s ability to Rog Lucido's New Book: "Restoring Sanity to the Classroom" - Living in Dialogue: