Brush up on your fry-serving skills while you're at it. You'll need 'em.
Posted on 03/18/2006 8:11:11 AM PST by LurkedLongEnough
From the academic sidelines, where calls to Leave No Child Untested are routinely sounded by quick-fix school reformers, Jay Mathews joins in with his Feb. 20 op-ed column, "Let's Teach to the Test." In well-crafted prose, he reports that "in 23 years of visiting classrooms I have yet to see any teacher preparing kids for exams in ways that were not careful, sensible and likely to produce more learning."
--snip--
Tests represent fear-based learning, the opposite of learning based on desire. Frightened and fretting with pre-test jitters, students stuff their minds with information they disgorge on exam sheets and sweat out the results. I know of no meaningful evidence that acing tests has anything to do with students' character development or whether their natural instincts for idealism or altruism are nurtured.
--snip--
To compensate for my no-testing policy, I assign tons of homework. The assignments? Tell someone you love him or her. Do a favor for someone who won't know you did it. Say a kind word to the workers at the school: the people who clean the toilets, cook the food, drive the buses and heat the buildings. And a warning: If you don't do the homework, you'll fail. You'll fail your better self, you'll fail to make the world better, you'll fail at being a peacemaker.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
Quick, what's an "idealistic moonbat"? Forget to memorize that one? bwhahaha
OMG, what a loon.
Brush up on your fry-serving skills while you're at it. You'll need 'em.
and he negelected to tell the little darlings that they will BECOME the toilet cleaners and floor sweepers and lunch line ladies if they don't pass the test tooo...!!!
Tests represent fear-based learning, the opposite of learning based on desire.
"Learning by desire"? What kind of nonsense is that?
Hell, I certainly didn't have any "desire" to learn Algebra or Geometry in High School , but without them (thank you Mr Gunty) my past 40 YEARS in ENGINEERING never would have been feasible.
I taught myself Trig, how to use a slide rule and the Physics I needed, oops "desired")
I agree, what a loon.
However, if you read the NCLB act to its fullest you will see that funding is tied directly to test results - which on the surface I have no problem with. But, when you when 100% of students, including Special Ed., kids, must be a the proficient level in order to get funds - it sets the stage of "teach to the test". I would never ask to "dumb down" the test - that accomplished nothing. I would set realistic standards for test scores and funding rates. BTW, all students must be at the proficiency level by 2012. Some political hack, who has never been in a classroom, probably came up with these figures.
It's a shame any school would waste students time with this jerk off. It does confirm my opinion of "journalism", don't worry about facts, write stories that make you feel good.
This is just a way of life for some people. Can I have my PhD sent to me? Now I will not have to study for that Pathophysiology exam. Whew, what a relief - I have been working too hard to become a nurse!
"No child left behind" sounds great but it fails to take into account that when you have meaningful standards some children will fail. (Ironically, the same educators that don't want to fail anyone often favor irrelevant licensing requirements for occupations in which the academically disinclined could succeed.)
I've heard about special ed teachers who are being pressured to drill their students in subject matter that is far beyond their abilities.
For the majority, however, I have no problem with "fear-based" learning. Were it not for deadlines, requirements, etc., how many of us would be productive at work? The books I was forced to master in high school are now, 40 years later, the ones I remember best and most fondly. The fun and "relevant" stuff I've mostly forgotten. They turned out not to be so relevant after all.
More to the point, it is far more important (from a funding perspective) that the low-end of the classroom squeak by "proficient", than for the high-end of the classroom fulfill their potential. Which means the high-achievers stand to be robbed of their share of the resources in order for the low-achievers to pass
The Department of Education was formed in the late '70s. We didn't seem to have much problem educating our children in the 200 years of this country that pre-dated this miserable money wasting department. So in my very humble opinion, we should raise the Dept. of Ed's. budget about 10% next year and mandate that it spends that money to eliminates itself.
My son attends a private christian school. Here are a couple of the things that caused us to make that decision.
When he was in 5th grade, we went on a vacation to New Orleans. Upon our return, I was visiting with his teacher, telling her a bit about the trip. I mentioned that we had taken him for a ride on the Mississippi Queen when she then asked me "What river is that on?". (That would be the MISSISSIPPI RIVER for those here who might be school teachers.)
Later in the conversation she asked me "Did William notice the difference down there?", and when I asked what she was referring to she said "You know.. the white and black water fountains and bathrooms and such". I was floored. This was not some little old lady who had simply been out of touch for years... this was a recent college grad who thought that they still had segregation in the South.
How can ignorant, uneducated teachers produce educated, knowledgeable students?
When he was in sixth grade, the principal requested I come to her office for a chat. She told me my son needed remedial reading, and showed me his test scores which said he had a 3rd grade reading level. Having seen material that he reads at home, I knew better. One thing which caught my eye, and apparently the teacher and principal did not find curious, was that the first two columns of answers (ya know those sheets where they answer by filling in the dots) the answers were 100% correct, about halfway down the 3rd column, and all of the fourth column... about 1 in 4 answers were right. I asked for William to be brought to the office, and I then began reading some of the questions he had missed to him, and he answered them correctly. I then asked him "When you completed the tests, what happened next?" He responded "When we got finished, we got to go out on the playground to play until the others finished." Hmmm... does it take a genius to figure out what happened here? It never occured to the teacher or principal that a student might not "take their academic career seriously" (the principals words, which reminded me of a similar line in the movie "Uncle Buck"), and that a student might do something like begin GUESSING and marking dots, just to finish quick and go play. For a bunch of expert educators, they sure seem out of touch with child psychology.
A year later, I went and hung around the classroom to observe one day, and the entire day I never saw the teacher actually teach.. not even for ten seconds. Reading assignements, and homework were already written on the board by the teacher in the first 10 minutes of the day. Doing that, and grading papers, seemed to be the extent of his job. Kids did not have seperate desks.. they are all in small groups at round tables. Kids who were trying to do their work were being distracted by those at the same table who wanted to screw around. Kids wandered here and there around the classroom, there was seemingly no structure at all. When I asked the "teacher" about it, he told me "It is not my job to teach them. We give them assignments, let them work it out on their own, and I only help out if they really get stuck."
I could share a few more such experiences, but I think my point is generally been made on that score.
My son has now been in private school for a year and a half. His peers are still in 8th grade, while my son has now completed 9th grade English, 10th grade math (he is now studying Algebra II), and at the rate he is going, he will be starting college at 16. He is not a genius, he is a pretty average kid. He is also under little pressure, because they allow kids to operate at their own pace. He has MORE kids in his class now, then he had in public school, so I do not think "overcrowded classrooms" was the issue here either. Budding behavioral problems we were experiencing have evaporated, and he now LOVES to go to school. His peers who are in 8th grade in public school? Well, among 18 students in that class, 16 of them got an F on their report cards in math last semester.
It is the best $120 a month I have ever spent. Meanwhile, my property taxes went up $470 this year, so that I can pay for bigger public school bldgs, and pay for other people's kids to be "educated".
Oh, a further afterthought...
When they tested kids in our schools for reading (and to get their funding), a couple weeks later letters went out to parents of kids who scored very low. They were told that our local school had tested below the national standards. As a result, those whose kids did poorly could then go to the school 7 miles further in the next town, which had tested higher. The implication was that those kids who were having problems qualified to go to a "better" school. What REALLY occured was that, without improving the reading of the kids, they moved the kids out of this school which were causing them to lose funding due to low scores, and moved them to a school that was above the standard enough that they would not cause that school to lose THEIR funding. The next year, our local school's scores climbed, and the other schools score dropped (just not enough to lose fundng), and both schools go their full funding. They came out with an article in the paper about how the schools must have improved, when in actuality, they improved not one bit. The kids read absolutely no better. But they played their little shell game and got their money anyway.
ping a ling...
I'd love to beat the tar out of that dweeb.
When we started homeschooling, the lice problem stopped.
"...and when I asked what she was referring to she said "You know.. the white and black water fountains and bathrooms and such".
---
PLEASE, please, please, tell me you're joking. Even if you have to lie to me.
My goodness.
I also took my child out of public school and put her in a private Christian academy. Even though we went without a few things (that we found we could live without anyway) it was, by far, the best money I ever spent. By the time college rolled around, she was more than prepared and had already learned the first two years' worth at school.
(Off topic, she came from a single-parent home and was, in her early years there, mocked a bit because she didn't have what the others had who came from wealthier families. That alone was probably worth what the education itself was worth.)
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