RE: social promotion, several unrelated comments

Eugene Matusov (ematusov who-is-at UDel.Edu)
Mon, 27 Sep 1999 20:46:58 -0400

Hi Nate and everybody--

Nate wrote,
>Standards and testing being the reform that
>get most if not all of the various interest groups on board. I do think
>even Heath and McDermott has provided a degree of capital to the general
>sense of failure that standards and tests are responding to.

I respectful disagree that testing and standards unite "most if not all"
critics and reformers of schooling. Jean Lave called school testing as
"parasitic practice" (see Lave and Wenger, 1991). I doubt that Ray
McDermott, Shirley Brice Heath, Barbara Rogoff will be the group of
supporters of using standards and testing in schools. By the way, you do not
need to have standards and testing to know that many kids are failing in
school (even among so called high academic achievers). It is enough to
observe kid losing their motivation to many academic activities like
reading, writing, and math.

Today in my undergraduate class on cultural diversity in teaching, we
discuss how to make "fair" math test. Students came to the idea that "fair"
test has to fail 50% of the students in the class. In this case, the test is
not too easy and not too difficult. So, failure of ones is success of
others.

What do you think?

Eugene

> -----Original Message-----
> From: nate [mailto:schmolze@students.wisc.edu]
> Sent: Monday, September 27, 1999 1:29 PM
> To: XMCA
> Subject: Re: social promotion, several unrelated comments
>
>
> Eugene and others,
>
> This morning I was working myself through *The Struggle for the American
> Curriculum* by Herbert Kliebard which related to your posting and what I
> was trying to get at. An excellent artifact of the struggle from
> 1983-1958
> which seems to have so much pertinence in today's reform climate.
>
> Kliebard looks at various aspects of progressivism including
> developmentalists, social efficiency, and social meliorist perspectives.
> What he argued, correctly in my opinion, that in interpreting progressive
> education we have to abandon the notion of progressivism as having stable
> attributes, and instead recognize that it be defined through somewhat
> consistent ideological positions and social language, and the success of a
> particular reform lies around a "boundary object" that unites the various
> "interest groups". This of course is a summary not a quote and he never
> used the word boundry object.
>
> What he does do is move beyond progressivism as reified through specific
> interest groups such as Dewey or the more scientific compoments of social
> efficiency or developmentalism. Progessivism being a movement with a
> shared "boundry object" via language and ideological positions united
> through a particular theme. For example the progressives;
> developmentalists, social efficiency, social meliorists were
> united against
> the humanitarians (conservatives preserving western culture). A particular
> language was used and one of those related to Dewey was "occupational
> learning".
>
> I have not read McDermott or Heath, so I will leave them out. But if we
> take Delpit, or Billings a message surfaces of high expectations
> for "other
> people's children". We also have the progressive element of new
> standards
> who, besides the conservatives, have been motivated by SOE who think they
> will raise the image of the profession. Then we have individual
> diciplines
> and other groups fighting for a spot on the stage. For example, despite
> how their being used by the conservatives the TIMSS took a negative stance
> toward "traditional" approaches in education. Linda Darling-Hammond (very
> much a Dewyian) has been a big proponent of standards along with
> Carl Grant
> and others on the Multicultural front.
>
> What we have is an alliance concerned with the failing of our schools, and
> of course the mother of all unifiers the failing of our teachers, with
> standards and tests as a "boundary object" that appears it will be able to
> address at least some of the needs of the various actors. Will
> teachers be
> seen as more professional? Probably not, and most likely as now the trend
> seems to be their wages with decrease along with their time. Will the
> standards make education more progressive as the various discipline
> stakeholders desire? Probably not, even with the evidence from TIMSS that
> point do they defects of the transmission model, that model will survive.
> Will the standards and tests increase equity in education? History shows
> that will not be the likely outcome.
>
> The reformers do seem to have different goals, but they also seem to unite
> around a certain way of talking about schools and a particular reform.
> While McDermott or Heath are not proponents of standards they, using the
> language of failure, imply something needing to be fixed. Reinforcing a
> general sense that there is something deeply wrong with our schools and
> they are in need of reform. Standards and testing being the reform that
> get most if not all of the various interest groups on board. I do think
> even Heath and McDermott has provided a degree of capital to the general
> sense of failure that standards and tests are responding to.
>
> Nate
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: Eugene Matusov <ematusov who-is-at udel.edu>
> To: <xmca who-is-at weber.ucsd.edu>
> Sent: Sunday, September 26, 1999 3:46 PM
> Subject: RE: social promotion, several unrelated comments
>
>
> > Hi everybody--
> >
> > I think that Nate's keen observation reveals differences in goals among
> > school reformers who argue for educational equity. Some people (e.g.,
> > Delpit) see the problem of current educational inequity in
> > overrepresentation of minority kids and kids from poor families among
> school
> > underachievers. They would seem to be happy if all social groups would
> fail
> > equally frequent (or equally rare). This group of reformers
> does not want
> to
> > fundamentally change the institution of school as a competitive
> place for
> > students but rather wants to provide "equal opportunities" for the
> > competition.
> >
> > The other group of reformers (e.g., McDermott, Heath) is concerned with
> any
> > student being failed and what to eliminate failure from the
> > institutionalized education. They want to make fundamental
> > reforms/transformations of school institution to eliminate the
> competition
> > among the students when academic success of one student is failure of
> > another, when educational goal implies and constructs failure (like in
> the
> > case of standards). There may be other groups of reformers
> (some of which
> > even would deny the notion of "reform" all together).
> >
> > What do you think?
> >
> > Eugene
> >
>