This book explains and gives evidence for these claims. Ms Ravitch does an excellent job at discussing why high stakes testing does not help our country to produce brighter students.
Her conclusions are profound both in their elegant simplicity and inescapable logic. I have been a teacher for 25 years. I also noticed that students who did drugs, or got into fights, or just struggled academically disappeared from the school over time. Some were expelled, some just removed themselves when they discovered they couldn't handle the work or didn't like having to wear a uniform, or didn't like the fact they had to deal with a dean of discipline. There is just no great way to equitably distribute merit pay. I have spent hours thinking about it but someone or group is always left out.
There is an area that she omitted from her review of reforms. Career academies may not raise test scores, but they do substantially increase the high school graduation rate. I highly recommend this book to anyone who has a stake in public schools (here's a hint that's everyone). A must read for educators.
Among the three prime villains there is one I had up to now thought of as among the angels: Bill Gates of Microsoft, or rather Bill Gates of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Neither he, nor his associates of the Walton and Broad foundations, practice any of the precious accountability that they demand of others.
They have been rewarded for doing well on tests by any means possible. I hear informally that a few (or maybe more than a few) schools wink at cheating because the competition to avoid being penalized is so harsh. Before we go any further with Race to the Top, please read this book. A broad, liberal arts curriculum is what's truly needed, but apparently it is nowhere to be found; it is too controversial in these contentious times. With the nation's educational system at greater risk than ever, it should be required reading for every school administrator and school board member in the United States. In 1996, he left academic life to pursue his interest in writing science books for young readers. In hope, I have purchased your book for each of our five school board members, and a sixth for our Superintendent of Schools. Diane Ravitch's The Death and Life of the Great American School System is an incredible account of how the American educational system is slowly but surely being destroyed by the illusion that parents have a better choice for the education of their children.
She also realized that the other key pillar of NCLB, assessment by standardized testing, has been producing an illusion of progress while in fact undermining the traditional strengths of the American educational system. Standardized testing is useful as an assessment tool, but its accuracy is limited.
While there I was exposed to works by Ayn Rand, Tom Sowell, and a host of other free-market thinkers, and I found myself largely convinced by their arguments. As graduation approached I wrote my thesis on free-market reforms in public education, taking the radical stance that public education was a failed experiment that should be abandoned. The founder of the organization - not an educator but a former insurance salesman - may have taken the State of California for over $100,000,000. That is no way to run a navy. First, standardized tests (which, like the fever thermometer, certainly have a place if intelligently used) are systematically gamed by teachers and administrators to get desired results. Even where used without deceptive intent, they cannot possibly tell us about the total quality of instruction.
Her conclusions are profound both in their elegant simplicity and inescapable logic. I have been a teacher for 25 years. I also noticed that students who did drugs, or got into fights, or just struggled academically disappeared from the school over time. Some were expelled, some just removed themselves when they discovered they couldn't handle the work or didn't like having to wear a uniform, or didn't like the fact they had to deal with a dean of discipline. There is just no great way to equitably distribute merit pay. I have spent hours thinking about it but someone or group is always left out.
There is an area that she omitted from her review of reforms. Career academies may not raise test scores, but they do substantially increase the high school graduation rate. I highly recommend this book to anyone who has a stake in public schools (here's a hint that's everyone). A must read for educators.
Among the three prime villains there is one I had up to now thought of as among the angels: Bill Gates of Microsoft, or rather Bill Gates of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Neither he, nor his associates of the Walton and Broad foundations, practice any of the precious accountability that they demand of others.
They have been rewarded for doing well on tests by any means possible. I hear informally that a few (or maybe more than a few) schools wink at cheating because the competition to avoid being penalized is so harsh. Before we go any further with Race to the Top, please read this book. A broad, liberal arts curriculum is what's truly needed, but apparently it is nowhere to be found; it is too controversial in these contentious times. With the nation's educational system at greater risk than ever, it should be required reading for every school administrator and school board member in the United States. In 1996, he left academic life to pursue his interest in writing science books for young readers. In hope, I have purchased your book for each of our five school board members, and a sixth for our Superintendent of Schools. Diane Ravitch's The Death and Life of the Great American School System is an incredible account of how the American educational system is slowly but surely being destroyed by the illusion that parents have a better choice for the education of their children.
She also realized that the other key pillar of NCLB, assessment by standardized testing, has been producing an illusion of progress while in fact undermining the traditional strengths of the American educational system. Standardized testing is useful as an assessment tool, but its accuracy is limited.
While there I was exposed to works by Ayn Rand, Tom Sowell, and a host of other free-market thinkers, and I found myself largely convinced by their arguments. As graduation approached I wrote my thesis on free-market reforms in public education, taking the radical stance that public education was a failed experiment that should be abandoned. The founder of the organization - not an educator but a former insurance salesman - may have taken the State of California for over $100,000,000. That is no way to run a navy. First, standardized tests (which, like the fever thermometer, certainly have a place if intelligently used) are systematically gamed by teachers and administrators to get desired results. Even where used without deceptive intent, they cannot possibly tell us about the total quality of instruction.
About the Author:
I spent 100s of pages defending this proposition using whatever statistics I could muster to bolster my case. furniture ottoman.
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