EXCERPTS FROM GADFLY NEWSLETTER 280204

 

True, Rod Paige should not have called the National Education Association "a terrorist organization." Given the times in which we live, the middle word in that phrase might have been better chosen. (How about "hostile"? "Disgraceful"? "Selfish?" "Anti-child?") But we're cheered by Paige's frequently memorable turns-of-phrase and his stubborn insistence on calling a spade what it is rather than a teaspoon. Such character is in short supply in Washington. Already, the Education Secretary gets credit for the best line in recent political memory, when he described the NCLB opposition as "a coalition of the whining." And we loved his give-no-ground apology for this week's gaffe. In honor of this transformation of mild-mannered educator into take-no-prisoners warrior, we'd like to sponsor a contest for the best description of the NEA. Is it a union of mass destruction? A group of dead-enders? Don't limit yourself to war-on-terror comparisons; let your creative juices flow. Gadfly serves as judge, with points given for wit, style, and economy of phrasing. Multiple entries are encouraged. Author of the best description gets his or her name in next week's issue and a much-desired Fordham tee shirt. Send your entries to backtalk@edexcellence.net.

 

The learning that was

 

The great British historian, Lord Macaulay, thought that talk of some sort of "golden age" was nonsense. "No man who is correctly informed as to the past, will be disposed to take a morose or desponding view of the present," he noted. It is in this spirit that we review this week's collection of sob stories on how NCLB, testing, standards, and assorted ills have ruined the magical teaching and learning that supposedly took place daily in U.S. classrooms before the onset of this draconian regimen called standards-based reform. In the Washington Post Magazine, Virginia teacher Emmet Rosenfeld complains that his state's Standards of Learning have driven him out of the Fairfax County classroom he occupied for a decade. "The intense pressure to raise test scores eventually squeezed the life out of school, both for my kids and for me," Rosenfeld complains. One of his fellow teachers notes with a sigh that he hasn't had the time for his annual coffeehouse: "Desks draped with tapestries, espresso maker bubbling in the background. Kids recited poetry into a microphone or played confessional songs on guitar." We don't even know what to say about this. A Time magazine article expresses a similar sentiment. Until recently, Garfield/Franklin elementary in Muscatine, Iowa was a bastion of progressive learning—students went "eagle watching on the Mississippi River, to the University of Iowa's Museum of Natural History, and have two daily recesses." But apparently, many students couldn't actually read the exhibits at the museum. Until the school redoubled its efforts to prepare students for the state's accountability test (i.e., to teach them basic computation skills and reading), barely half achieved minimal proficiency in reading and math on the Iowa Test of Basic Skills. Now, according to Ripley, "the percentage of fourth-graders who passed the reading test rose from 58 percent to 74 percent; in math, proficiency went from 58 percent to 86 percent." But Franklin elementary "has become a very different place. The kids are better readers and mathematicians and test takers" but teachers "bemoan a loss of spontaneity, breadth, and play—problems money won't fix." Spontaneous illiteracy: now there's an educational outcome for you.

 

"The best answer," by Emmet Rosenfeld, Washington Post Magazine, February 22, 2004

"Beating the bubble test," by Amanda Ripley, Time, March 1, 2004

 

Maximizing Intelligence

David J. Armor, Transaction Publishers

July 2003

 

David J. Armor, professor of public policy at George Mason University, authored this book, which argues that intelligence is hugely important to success in life and also that it is mutable. In other words, one arrives in the world not with a fixed IQ but with intelligence that can be damaged or enhanced, primarily by one's parents and mainly during the pre-school years. Armor spells out ten "risk factors," of which the child is stuck with some (e.g. parents' level of education, birth weight) but others can be improved upon: cognitive stimulation, emotional support, nutrition, etc. After an exhaustive review of the effects of schools and preschools, Armor concludes that, while they indisputably boost almost everyone's level of knowledge, they don't have significant or lasting differential effects on poor kids. Which is to say, "the effects are sufficiently uniform that whatever skill gaps children bring to school tend to be perpetuated through the school career despite special interventions." That leads Armor to conclude that the best way to maximize children's intelligence is via their parents and that the appropriate policy tools entail strengthening parents and families and mitigating the adverse "risk factors." "The ideal program would begin with young people before they become parents, which means targeting teenagers. . . . The program would first encourage completion of as much education as possible. . . . A major goal for prospective parents would be to delay childbirth until all education is completed, and another major goal would maximize the rate of marriage before couples have children. . . . Finally, the program would offer training in parenting skills." He observes that few states have all the elements of such a policy and nowhere are they well integrated. I don't know how realistic this approach is but it's a sobering proposal and a needed reminder that education policy needs to be accompanied by ways of dealing constructively with other potent influences on the lives of young children. The publisher is Transaction Books, the ISBN is 076580185X and you can obtain additional information at http://www.transactionpub.com/cgibin/transactionpublishers.storefront.

by Chester E. Finn, Jr.

 

(Another explanation for why the ERPS program works so well – it genuinely integrates parents into the pre-school intellectual development game. GS)