"Every hour that poor and minority school children spend drilling
basic skills is an hour NOT SPENT developing the higher-level thinking
skills that are emphasized in wealthier school districts.
"The No Child Left Behind Act is creating a caste-like system in which
students' future prospects are likely to be similar to those of their
parents."
Such are some of the growing areas of disgust with another Bush
administration failure -- if not another crime!
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"Classroom Caste System"
By David Keyes
Opinion
The Washington Post
Monday, April 9, 2007; A13
Written five years ago to reduce the "achievement gap," the No Child
Left Behind Act has in fact created a gap in American education. Its
pressure to raise test scores has caused many schools to give poor and
minority students an impoverished education that focuses primarily on
basic skills.
As it comes up for reauthorization, members of Congress should
consider the unintended consequence of the act: a new gap between poor
and minority students, who are being taught to seek simple answers,
and largely wealthy and white students, who are learning to ask
complex questions.
In my work as an elementary school teacher, I have seen this new gap
and I worry about its impact on my students' future prospects.
Although supporters and critics of No Child Left Behind agree on
little, both would acknowledge that testing lies at the heart of the
law. Schools approach the act's testing requirements differently,
depending on the students they serve.
Fifty years after Brown v. Board of Education, American schools remain
largely segregated. Schools serving mostly wealthy and white students
have a distinct advantage when it comes to testing. Their students are
far more likely to be raised in an environment that gives them the
necessary tools to succeed on tests. They grow up with the
intellectual abundance their wealth provides: books, educational
videos and Baby Einstein games, to name a few.
Having these resources may not make children smarter, but it does
educate them in many of the skills -- such as letter sounds and
addition facts -- that are covered on standardized tests. Knowing
their students are likely to succeed on tests gives these schools
freedom to teach higher-level thinking skills.
Poor and minority children also come to school with rich backgrounds.
They speak foreign languages, make music, tell vivid stories and have
other skills not typical of their peers. Their backgrounds, however,
often do not provide them with the academic skills needed to succeed
on standardized tests. Fearful of poor test scores that can bring
punitive measures, schools spend an inordinate amount of time
preparing their students for the tests.
Schools often use test-prep programs to try to raise test scores. The
problem with these programs is that they teach the skills covered on
tests, and only these skills. Poor and minority students spend hours
repeating "B buh ball" and two plus two equals four. Every hour spent
drilling basic skills is an hour not spent developing the higher-level
thinking skills that are emphasized in wealthier school districts.
I have worked in both types of schools. Currently, I teach in an
almost exclusively minority, high-poverty elementary school.
Administrators require teachers to strictly adhere to a months-long
test-prep program. My students recoil at the sight of their test-prep
books. Last year, some of my students cried, wracked with anxiety over
the tests.
My students are 7 and 8 years old.
I did my student teaching in an almost exclusively white and wealthy
school. There, the students studied the role of quilts on the
Underground Railroad, brainstormed plans to save wolves from
extinction and performed dances based on retellings of Cinderella. The
children learned to think and they loved it.
At the end of the year, test results will come out for these two
schools. Educators and politicians will trumpet any reduction of the
so-called achievement gap. This misses the point. Students will leave
these two schools and schools like them with a widely varying set of
skills.
As the achievement gap is being reduced, another gap is being created.
Students in largely wealthy and white schools are learning to ask
larger questions; students in poor and minority schools are only being
taught to answer smaller ones.
The effect of this gap will be long-lasting. Students taught higher-
level thinking skills will be able to compete for jobs at the upper
echelon of the 21st-century economy. Students who receive an
impoverished education focused on basic skills will be stuck at the
bottom.
The No Child Left Behind Act is creating a caste-like system in which
students' future prospects are likely to be similar to those of their
parents. This undemocratic development is at odds with a society that
prides itself on being a meritocracy.
As Congress debates the renewal of the law, members should consider
not only whether the act is reducing the achievement gap but also the
skills gap it is creating.
(The writer is a second-grade teacher at Bel Pre Elementary School in
Silver Spring, Maryland.)
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/04/08/AR2007040800925.html
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