Leaving Public Education Behind

• Published in: Radical teacher (Cambridge) 2004-03 (68), p.32
• Main Author: Karp, Stanley
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Academic achievement; Achievement tests; Charter schools; Education; Educational Change; Educational Facilities Improvement; Educational Quality; Educational Strategies; English as a second language learning; Federal government; Government; Multicultural Education; Multiculturalism & pluralism; Nontraditional Education; Parent Participation; Parents & parenting; Politics; Public schools; School systems; Social conditions & trends; Society; Special education; Standardized Tests; Teachers
• ISSN: 0191-4847; 1941-0832

The scheme uses achievement gaps to label schools as "failures," without providing the resources or support needed to eliminate them and includes an unfunded mandate that, by 2014, 100 percent of all students, including special education students and English-language learners, must be proficient on state tests. Assessing the effectiveness of a particular school or education program requires multiple measures of academic performance including classroom observations and dialogue with real teachers and students, as well as a range of indicators from attendance and drop-out rates to graduation rates and post-graduation success, measures of teacher preparation and quality, surveys of parent participation and satisfaction and similar evaluations. [...]if the goal is a political one--to posture about "getting tough," to drive multicultural curriculum reforms, equity concerns, and more pluralistic, bottom-up approaches to school reform out of the system, or to create a widespread general perception of school failure that can be used to justify "breaking up the public school monopoly"--then over-reliance on standardized testing may do just fine. [...]while inequality in test scores is one indicator of school performance, test scores also reflect other inequalities that persist in the larger society and in schools themselves. [...]combining rhetorical concern for the victims of inequality with policies that perpetuate it may be an operative definition of "compassionate conservatism."