Tag: NCLB

copyright © 2011 Betsy L. Angert.  Empathy And Education; BeThink or  BeThink.org

I am but one who will stand strong to ensure an equal education for all.  All who do or plan to, will express themselves in various ways.  Some will March. Others will Rally or gather in Conference.  Several have, do, or expect to act locally.  Countless change what they can for children within the dynamics that define their family.  Nationwide, innumerable Americans join hands and embrace a common cause. Let us Save Our Schools.

Book review: Garrison, Mark J.  A Measure of Failure: The Political Origins of Standardized Testing.  Albany NY: SUNY Press, 2009. 140 pages.

Essentially Garrison’s book critiques standardized testing in the public schools as a power trip — what type of power trip a particular test is for, Garrison argues, depends upon the standards which are erected and the purposes to which the final scores on the tests are used.  It is argued, then, that standardized tests have had different purposes in different historical periods.  The high-stakes testing regime of the No Child Left Behind Act (of the Bush administration) is argued to be destructive (in this regard) of public schooling in general.

(Crossposted at Orange)

… go to http://www.change.org/ideas/br… , go to the “browse ideas by cause” box, and scroll down to “education” … anyway, I can’t quite figure out why the top three ideas are getting the votes they’re getting.

At any rate, I would like to recommend a vote for the proposal currently in 5th place — “Replace No Child Left Behind With a Strong Education Policy.”

UPDATE: we need 278 more votes…  

UPDATE #2: Ballot closed, we lost.  Go team Esperanto!

This is a review of two books suggesting a constructivist critique of the public school system as it stands: Kaia Tollefson’s Volatile Knowing, a constructivist critique of NCLB, and Tollefson and Osborn’s Cultivating the Learner-Centered Classroom, a practical guide to constructivist teaching.

(crossposted at Big Orange)

this is crossposted from Daily Kos, which will explain some of the dkos specific references

Our No. 1 education program is incoherent, unworkable, and doomed. But the next president still can have a huge impact on improving American schooling.

   So says perhaps the most cogent writer on educational matters, Richard Rothstein, in a piece in he American Prospect whose title, like that of this diary, is Leaving “No Child Left Behind” Behind   Before The New York Times lost its senses, Rothstein wrote columns regularly on educational matters.   Those of us who try to help the general public and policy matters  understand the reality of educational policy have often drawn some of our bgest arguments from his work.

The article, which became available online yesterday, presents the key issues as well as they can be presented, and there is little I can add, although I will offer a few comments of my own.  The notable educational figure Deborah Meier has said that we should blog about this and distribute the article as widely as possible.    I urge you to consider doing what you can, including if warranted recommended this diary, to make the article as visible as possible.

This is an attempt to unmask the paucity of thought implied in political “realism” as typically portrayed on DKos and elsewhere.  It concludes with a plea for “unrealism” in politics.  Realism has punted in Iraq, civil rights, health insurance, and education; can we expect it to do any better with climate change?

(crossposted @ DKos)